CASETiFY Joins Forces with Takashi Murakami to Celebrate One of the Artist’s Most Beloved Characters

CASETiFY, a number one developer of tech equipment for greater than a decade, has introduced the small print for its much-anticipated partnership with Japanese artist and cultural icon Takashi Murakami.

Murakami and CASETiFY teased “TAKASHI MURAKAMI x CASETiFY: MR. DOB” at ComplexCon in Hong Kong in March, billing it as CASETiFY’s most bold collaboration with an artist thus far. The whole assortment formally launches worldwide on April 11, 2025.

“When Takashi-san and I first met, we talked for hours about making artwork a part of everybody’s each day digital life,” says CASETiFY CEO and co-founder Wes Ng. “What adopted was months of shut collaboration, pushing the boundaries of what’s attainable whenever you merge iconic artwork with on a regular basis tech. This assortment is the results of that shared imaginative and prescient.”

The drop highlights the launch of CASETiFY Journey in December 2024, marking the model’s growth into way of life equipment past the world of tech. Murakami x CASETiFY is the primary artist collaboration to function the brand new journey line’s flagship providing, the Bounce Carry-On suitcase, which adapts CASETiFY’s proprietary shock-absorbing expertise to full-sized cargo.

The Murakami x CASETiFY partnership can be the inaugural installment within the Hong Kong-based firm’s new CASETiFY iCONS collection, which invitations premier manufacturers and artistic luminaries to develop limited-edition items full with experiential moments and sudden product improvements distinctive to every collaboration.

CASETiFY isn’t any stranger to the world of nice artwork. A partnership between the tech equipment firm and the Louvre Museum imbues laptop cases, magnetic wireless device chargers, and Snappy™ Cardholder Stands with the likenesses of the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Ingres’ Grande Odalisque. Earlier this 12 months, CASETiFY debuted its Andy Warhol collection, which adapts iconic motifs just like the Banana and Campbell’s Soup Can into collectible cell machine circumstances.

Takashi Murakami is a logical successor in that lineup and the perfect determine to headline CASETiFY’s iCONS collection. For greater than 30 years, the artist has championed a visible language predicated on the smashing collectively of dichotomies, an strategy he codified with the publication of his “Superflat” principle in 2000. Murakami’s principle describes a Japanese visible artwork custom of two-dimensional imagery that privileges depth of shade over practical dimension, and relates this to the flattening of distinctions between nice and widespread artwork that has pervaded in his homeland because the twentieth century. Superflat has since turn out to be shorthand for Murakami’s era-defining model, which attracts inspiration from manga and anime as a lot as conventional Japanese artwork varieties.

MR. DOB first appeared in Murakami’s work in 1993 and shortly turned an indicator of the artist’s idiomatic vocabulary. The character was devised as a touch upon the ubiquity and affect of commercialism and a solution to popular culture figures like Doraemon and Mickey Mouse, however has since has turn out to be a vector for Murakami’s exploration of different bifurcated themes like innocence and corruption. Right now, MR. DOB is seen as an avatar for the artist in its many recurrences and evolutions all through Murakami’s profession.

Murakami’s vibrant aesthetic and knack for coining distinctive characters has lengthy made his work ripe for collaborations. Previous partnerships have run the gamut of manufacturers from Crocs and UNO playing cards to Supreme and Louis Vuitton, and he’s teamed up with the likes of Kanye West, Future and Billie Eilish to offer visuals for album covers and music movies. However regardless of Murakami’s enduring prevalence in popular culture, the Murakami x CASETiFY assortment is among the most vital industrial collaborations centering MR. DOB thus far.

“MR. DOB has been my inventive companion because the starting of my profession, representing each my evolution as an artist and my commentary on modern tradition,” says Murakami. “Via this collaboration with CASETiFY, I’m excited to carry MR. DOB into folks’s on a regular basis lives in a wholly new approach.”

In the case of turning on a regular basis carry gear into a private assertion, it’s arduous to high what CASETiFY has to supply. Customization is on the core of the corporate’s model, and this assortment isn’t any exception. The MR. DOB Bounce Carry-On, the cornerstone merchandise within the lineup, might be customized with the proprietor’s initials in considered one of two fonts designed only for CASETiFY: the clear, minimalist DOT font or the daring, geometric SKYLINE font. The bags’s putting design seamlessly merges this tradition monogram with MR. DOB graphics towards the eye-catching cobalt blue, cherry purple, or matte black background of the Bounce Carry-On’s modern shell.

If the satan’s within the particulars, then the small print of the gathering’s telephone circumstances don’t disappoint. One other unmissable Murakami motif, the smiling flower, is built-in into the case’s development, and choose variations may also be customized with the proprietor’s initials in CASETiFY’s proprietary DOT and SKYLINE fonts. A really one-of-a-kind element, nonetheless, is reserved for a single, ultra-limited case design: The ring component that encloses the telephone digital camera housing is white with blue textual content — a singular variation upon CASETiFY’s signature white-on-black detailing bearing the model’s wordmark, unique to the CASETiFY iCONS collection.

The MR. DOB Collectible Headphone Cowl presents a wearable choice, with MR. DOB-style ears (full with CASETiFY/Murakami branding) that affix to the headscarf of Apple AirPods Max headphones, whereas MR. DOB Collectible Earbuds Case casts the character as a full-body figurine that homes an AirPods charging case. Die-hard collectors would possibly hunt down the MR. DOB Telephone Case Dangler collectible figurines in considered one of three colorways — packaged in a blind field to raise the fun of the chase — or the MR. DOB Snappy™ Buying and selling Card Holder, a standout accent to guard and show essentially the most treasured additions to any card hunter’s vault.  

“From our first-ever artist-designed personalizable suitcase to the particular white digital camera ring reserved for our iCONS program, each component of this assortment pushes artistic and technical boundaries,” says Ng, CASETiFY’s CEO. Any Takashi Murakami fan eager to carry a number of the artist’s kaleidoscopic aptitude to their most reached-for gadgets will discover simply what they’re searching for on this singular assortment.

The CASETiFY x TAKASHI MURAKAMI: MR. DOB assortment will probably be out there in very restricted portions by way of CASETiFY’s on-line platform and choose retail areas all through South Korea, the US, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Clients worldwide can preview the total assortment and be a part of the waitlist at casetify.com/co-lab/takashi-murakami for unique early entry earlier than the worldwide launch on April 11, 2025.