It’s February already, and Valentine’s Day is sneaking up on us again. If you’re anything like me, you’re not giving or getting diamonds or cars with big red bows on them—those gifts are for the rich and boring. Skip the cards and the pricey flowers; they’re a drain on the environment and your wallet. If you’re creative and romantic you can have an unforgettable Valentine’s Day without breaking the bank. Here are a few ways to show you care for little or no cash:

Re-trace a favorite memory together:
Take the same hike, wear the clothes you wore on your first date, queue up a movie on Netflix that you two saw and loved in the theater. Go through old pictures together and try not to make fun of each other’s past haircuts. Then plan new memories you can make together by plotting out a dream vacation that you hope to take some day—pick the exotic destination, the restaurants you want to try, and the romantic hotel. (This is way cheaper than actually going to the hotel.)

Choose a meal from your favorite restaurant and try to recreate it at home:
Bonus points if it’s something complicated like sushi or chicken roulade (I don’t even know what “chicken roulade” is). Roll up your sleeves, put your apron on, and make appetizers and dessert, too. Set a fancy table with candles, a tablecloth, a vase, and the good china. Print out your personalized menu and trust that if your partner really loves you, they’ll tell you it tastes great before they feed it to the dog.

Why be selfish?:
Use the day to spread love and build your relationship by helping out at a soup kitchen, walking the dogs at your local shelter, or volunteering your time at a charity you really care about. There’s no better time than a day that celebrates love to start a new tradition helping your community. The effort will make you feel great and bring you closer together as a couple.

Write a song:
Show your partner you’re a rock star by writing a love song and recording it on a tape recorder—or giving a live performance. If you’re tone deaf or can’t pick out a tune on the guitar or piano, change the words to a song you love to make it about your partner. Make up a little dance to accompany it and give them a copy of the lyrics so they can sing along!

Look to the 15th:
My personal favorite, celebrate the Day After Valentine’s Day instead of the day itself—you can even get the nice chocolates and the (slightly wilted, but still good) roses, because they’re 50% off! Swing by a couple drug stores to pick up your discounted haul and eat sale candy until your teeth hurt. Fill out each valentine with something you love about your partner and leave them around the house. Congratulate yourself on being a thrifty couple and think of all the things you can buy with the money you saved by waiting until February 15th to show your love.

Valentine’s Day really doesn’t have to be about spending money to show your love. Think about what’s special to your relationship and plan your day according to you and your partner’s tastes, not what the greeting cards tell you Valentine’s Day is about. Use your imagination: If you’ve got to have chocolates, make your own with a simple truffle recipe (those really exist). If you’ve got to have flowers, buy her a potted perennial: It’s cheaper than a bouquet, plus it will live on long after the holiday’s over as a symbol of your love. Diamonds and new cars are nice, but the best way to show your love is to spend time together—and that’s totally free.

Fair current versus counter current, direct motion versus retrograde, downwind as opposed to upwind. The theme of opposites is central to “With” and “Against,” the sculptural piece by Benny Luk. Set in the Financial District, the work seeks to represent two seemingly-unrelated cultures, movements and mind frames that meet on the well-paved streets— the emerging market power of the Beijing’s finance scene, and the burgeoning skateboard movement of the local skate scene. The work is a contemplation of the motion relationship that finance and skate both share and diverge upon. Both scenes are in a dynamic and positive state of growth and forward movement, while the principles of their culture seem starkly opposite. Finance is a machine of the establishment, while skate is a lifestyle committed to be anti-establishment. Luk’s piece is composed of skateboards, and constructed to be transparent and open to interpretation. Luk views the sculpture as a “process,” as they are not “unconditionally stable.” His deconstruction of the strokes of the Chinese characters represents the changing state of the two worlds which he sees as constantly evolving with the effects of “time and cumulation.”

At the forefront of visual art culture in Hong Kong and mainland China, Benny Luk combines traditional Chinese design sensibilities with contemporary methods and themes. He was recently recognized by Computer Arts Magazine as one of the “world’s greatest illustrators”. His design workshop – Sixstation works in the fields of creative graphics, web and typography design and illustration. He also mans his own clothing line – Beyond Fayte. Benny has won many awards from both local and international institutes, including three from the Tokyo Type Directors Club (TTDC), a leading proponent of the artistic expression of Chinese and Japanese characters.

Financial Street Central Square, Xicheng District

Vortext has grown out of Brody’s Antimatter font produced for Fuse 20, his magazine publication dedicated to experimental typography. Vortext is about the new creative potential released by urban regeneration as is the case in today’s fast changing Beijing. The work has sub-themes of disorder which leads to dynamic evolution, meaning you have to destroy to renew, and, the new renaissance through the cracks of urban decay, like green shoots growing out of the separations in old concrete. The colours Brody has chosen are deliberately optimistic mirroring the plastic culture which surrounds us. Brody feels the work reflects “exuberance through reclaiming the mechanical space (reconstructivism), humanising the technological space and breaking down language to discover new meaning – where language becomes a living space”. Vortext has been designed especially as a one-off piece for Off Canvas by Converse.

Neville Brody is an internationally renowned designer, typographer, art director and brand strategist. Alongside his studio work he is also a passionate voice in the design community, an educator and a spokesman for counter culture in the creative industries. At the start of his career he worked for several record companies; Rocking Russian, Stiff Records and Fetish Records where he pushed visual and creative boundaries and created iconic music imagery for seminal bands. His talent expanded into the publishing world as Art Director of The Face magazine then Creative Director of Arena Magazine, after which he established his own namesake design studio, now called Research Studios. In 1988 the V&A Museum held an exhibition of his work to accompany his first monograph The Graphic Language of Neville Brody, which became the world’s best selling graphic design book.

2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District

Nod Young’s work here at MAO Live is a salute to the undying influence of the “New Wave” music movement upon his formative years as a student and now continuing into his adulthood as an artist. His piece is inspired by his nostalgia for new wave, which he reveres for its rebellious punk foundation, but his deeper fascination lies within the complexities of technology and art that further define the sound. His memories of his student days are inextricably linked to his soundtrack of The Cars, Duran Duran and The Police. As Nod navigates forward in his life, he finds his previous pursuits of new wave seem to be waning— he is less avid about seeing live shows, he finds himself standing further and further back in the crowds, and his well-worn new wave music collection stands idle. Upon deeper examination however, the artist reaffirms the spirit of the movement still burns brightly, albeit manifested in a new fashion. He celebrates the seminal influence of the new wave from within, channeling the “passion, maverick, romance and senses” of it into his art work. His work represents a musical composition of new wave in an alternate form–with the the stripes as his lyrics, the color as his melody, and vocals jointly comprised of his own, together with the viewer. This piece is a dual ode to both MAO live the venue, and to new wave, the music movement—two institutions of music that hold relevance then and now. His multimedia work serves as an epitaph to what’s “past,” and well as a milestone to the “future.”

As the resident homegrown Beijing talent within the exhibition, Nod Young is a visual artist specializing in digital design and visual arts. His work is defined by a unique style and insight that cross-pollinates Chinese culture with elements ranging from the avant garde to the traditional, in a search for a new visual language and expression. Nod has participated in exhibitions around the globe, from the UK to Spain, Finland, Singapore, USA and South Africa. Nod cites his primary inspiration as the desire to change life through art and creativity in a way that can influence the world at large and enrich the sensations of individuals.

No.111 Gulou East Street, Dongcheng District

Shoe selected the rooftop medium of Dashilar as a modern replication and nod to Chinese sidewalk calligraphy. The work is an interpretation of personal identity – his writing name – which he has honed internationally over two decades from the street to gallery. In his work, Meulman mimics the Chinese tradition of water as ink and sidewalk as paper, yet in the craft and tools of his distinctive trade.

The ‘UN-’ and its stylistic form consisting of four calligraphic strokes symbolizes the power of reversal. Meulman’s “calligrafiti”-style of thick brush strokes draw attention to themselves as much as to the space between them. Ink, and the absence of ink create black/white, on/off and positive/negative.The artist contemplates the parallel to how all digital data is broken down to one’s and zero’s while everything in our material world can also be broken down to these basic opposites. As Meulman states, “We can only be comfortable, if we were uncomfortable before. To be alive is only to be undead.” When science proudly presents its universal laws, artists will understand that they are ununiversal. “If you don’t understand this, ununderstand,” says the artist.

Niels Meulman (also known as Shoe) is an internationally known artist and graphic designer hailing from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Meulman began tagging ‘Shoe’ in 1979 and became a graffiti legend by the time he was 18. In the eighties he met New York artists like Dondi, Rammellzee, Haze, Quik and Keith Haring. He then formed the Crime Time Kings with Bando from Paris and Mode2 from London, driving a new distinctive style of graffiti in Europe. In 2007, Niels launched his definitive movement “Calligraffiti,” an art form that fuses calligraphy and graffiti. Since then, his Calligraffiti pieces (signed NSM) are shown in various international exhibitions and are part of several museum collections. His more recent painting style can be described as Abstract Expressionism with a Calligraphic origin.

68 Wudaoying Hutong, Dongcheng District

8 Da Wai Lang Ying Hutong, Xicheng District (in the Beijing Electric Relay Factory)

As part of a global installation that EINE has painted in numerous other cities in the world, the artist proclaims a positive and uplifting message completely open to interpretation. The optimism of the work is equally founded in the brilliant colors and type. The range of emotions and meanings he has elicited from viewers of his piece has been a major inspiration and motivation for him to bring this message to China.

Ben Flynn, aka EINE is one of London’s most prolific and original street artists who specializes in the central element of all graffiti – the form of letters. Originally a ‘writer’ he started his career over twenty five years ago as a vandal leaving his first tag all over London before eventually developing a distinct typographic style. Eine specializes in producing huge, bright, colorful letters that have transformed streets around the world in cities including LA, San Francisco, Paris, Dublin, Tokyo, Stockholm as well as his home city of London. His letters depict form and emotion and through a combination of color, placement and size they become abstract and unique works of art in their own right.

130 Xidan North Street, Huawei Building, Xicheng District

Play is a literal name for an abstraction of nostalgic traditions of Beijing, captured in type. The original font is Ying’s own labor of love, having experimented meticulously on it for over four years based off an ancient Chinese script. Here in the Wudaoying Hutongs where an emerging commerce driven by enterprising young creatives is developing, he uses Play to commemorate the heritage of Chinese youth culture via the popular childhood games that used to haunt the alleys: shuttlecock, spinning tops, marbles, hoops, and jumprope. The spirit of “play” helped to organically engage and connect the community in the past, and may now serve as a unifying memory among the hutong again. To illustrate the dynamism of the games, Ying deconstructs each of the words and phrases into groups of movements, joined by abstract strokes that force the viewer to re-combine the phrases, just like a game. To emphasize the cheer and good will that these games brought, the character for “mouth”– which is depicted in a smiling manner– has also been emphasized in each word.

Ying Yonghui comes from the southern island Xiangshan County in Zhejiang Province. Over that last decade he has established his craft within Shanghai as an artist and graphic designer. Within the China design community he is a known for his expertise and love of fonts and is celebrated as one of the industry’s foremost typography designers and researchers. More recently he has expanded his notoriety to the greater design scene with collaborative work and projects on various typography design and exhibitions across China. His work is defined by a sense of playfulness and challenge to convention and tradition, while upholding the beauty of Chinese script.

68 Wudaoying Hutong, Dongcheng District

Oh, Hello:
Brooklyn-based band Jumpers showcase their love for each other and discuss the perks of being musicians in a big city.

Find out more about the band HERE.

Tuesday, February 14th 2012 : Transmission 4 – With word out about the upcoming 3 Artists, 1 Song track release, Murdoc’s home has become more than he bargained for. Listen in for Murdoc’s plans to turn his mucky situation into something else entirely.
 
 

Thursday, February 9th 2012 : Transmission 3 – After weeks of keeping mum (due to the threats, of course), the elusive Murdoc Niccals hits the airwaves to unleash the names of his victims, ahem, artists featured on the upcoming 3 Artists, 1 Song track “DoYaThing”.
 

Monday, February 6th 2012 : Transmission 2 – After establishing his new radio station, Gorillaz’s Murdoc Niccals now dangles a tasty little tidbit. Supposedly it has something to do with the upcoming Converse 3 Artists, 1 Song track release, but who can be sure with Murdoc?
 

Wednesday, February 1st 2012 : Transmission 1 – Murdoc breaks his radio silence to let the kiddie-winkles know that he’s created some sort of new monster. Tune in and let good old Uncle Murdoc fill your boots with this sticky bit of news.