Rachel: Alright Justine, quick question for you. If you had to describe Japanese design in one word, what would it be? Justine: Oh, that's easy. "Minimalist." Clean lines, no clutter, lots of white and natural wood. Am I close? Rachel: You're not wrong, but you've just gracefully stepped onto the very first, most visible layer of a very, very deep ocean. Today, we're diving into a book that takes that idea of minimalism and reveals what's really going on underneath. It’s Designing Design by the legendary Kenya Hara. Justine: Ah, the MUJI guy! The master of minimalism himself. I love MUJI. It’s like a spa for my apartment. Rachel: Exactly. He’s been the art director for MUJI since 2002. But as he shows in this book, what we perceive as minimalism is actually something far deeper, a concept he calls "emptiness." Designing Design is hailed by creative professionals as this almost sacred text, not because it's a portfolio of cool-looking things, but because it's a profound philosophy. Hara argues that the true purpose of design isn't to make things pretty; it's to reawaken our perception of the world. Justine: Reawaken our perception? That sounds incredibly lofty. I mean, we're talking about stuff, right? How does a chair or a pen reawaken my perception? Rachel: That is the perfect question. And Hara’s answer is as surprising as it is brilliant. He starts with the most mundane, everyday objects you can imagine.

Rachel: Hara’s first big idea is a project he calls 'RE-DESIGN'. The whole point is to take things we see and use every single day—things we've become completely blind to—and make them "unknown" again. Justine: Making the unknown... you mean like, making them weird? Rachel: Exactly! To make you stop and think, "Huh, I've never thought about this before." His most famous example is from an exhibition where he asked the architect Shigeru Ban to redesign a roll of toilet paper. Justine: Okay, I'm listening. How on earth do you redesign toilet paper? Make it softer? Add a scent? Rachel: He made the cardboard core square instead of round. Justine: Wait, a square toilet paper roll? Why? That sounds... structurally unsound. And probably really annoying to use. Rachel: That's the genius of it! A round roll spins smoothly, effortlessly. You can pull off a long sheet without even thinking. But a square roll? As you pull, it creates this slight resistance, this little thump-thump-thump as the corners turn. It makes a sound. It makes you feel the friction. Justine: And that’s a good thing? It sounds like a bug, not a feature. Rachel: It's a feature of consciousness! That little bit of resistance makes you aware of what you're doing. It subtly communicates, "Hey, you're using a resource." It’s a design that encourages conservation not with a sign or a slogan, but with a feeling. It makes the familiar act of using toilet paper suddenly unfamiliar and thought-provoking. Justine: Wow. Okay, my mind is slightly blown. I've never thought so hard about toilet paper in my life. The design is a message, not just an object. Rachel: Precisely. And he takes it even further. Another architect, Kengo Kuma, was asked to redesign a roach trap. Justine: Oh, gross. The sticky ones you hide under the sink and pray you never have to look at again? Rachel: Those exact ones. Kuma redesigned it as a beautiful, translucent paper structure. It looks like a small, elegant piece of architecture. The idea was to transform this repulsive, hidden object into something you wouldn't mind seeing in your home. Justine: I love that in theory. But... at the end of the day, it's still a trap full of dead roaches. Does making it beautiful really change the fundamental grossness of its job? I feel like I'd just have a very chic-looking bug graveyard on my floor. Rachel: And that's the tension Hara wants us to feel! It forces us to question the relationship between aesthetics and function. Does beauty absolve an object of its unpleasant purpose? Or does it create a new, more complicated relationship? The point isn't to give a definitive answer, but to make you ask the question. He's not just designing objects; he's designing thoughts. Justine: Designing thoughts. I like that. It's moving beyond just how something looks, to how it makes you think.

Rachel: And that psychological effect is the perfect bridge to his next big idea. Hara argues that our modern world, with its obsession with screens and smooth surfaces, has been designed almost exclusively for our eyes. We've become numb. His solution is a concept he calls 'Haptic' design. Justine: Haptic? Like the feedback on my phone when I type? Rachel: That's a tiny sliver of it. For Hara, haptic design is about awakening all of our senses: touch, sound, smell, even taste. He organized an entire exhibition around this idea, challenging designers to create objects that you experience with your whole body. Justine: Okay, give me an example. What does a haptic object look like? Or, I guess, feel like? Rachel: The most brilliant one is from designer Naoto Fukasawa. He created a series of juice cartons called 'Juice Skin'. Imagine a carton of kiwi juice, but instead of being smooth, the surface of the package has the exact fuzzy, bristly texture of a real kiwi skin. The banana juice carton has the waxy, slightly ridged feel of a banana peel. Justine: That is so cool! It’s like the packaging is giving you a sensory preview of the flavor. You'd know what it was even with your eyes closed. It makes so much sense! Why isn't everything designed like this? It feels like we're living in a sensory desert of cold, smooth glass and plastic. Rachel: Hara would say that's because technology has "thickened our skins." We've outsourced our senses. We don't need to feel the texture of a material if an app can tell us what it is. He talks about how people used to be able to peel an apple in one long, continuous strip—a skill that required incredible tactile feedback—and now that dexterity is mostly gone. Justine: I can barely peel a potato without injuring myself. So this is about bringing that sensory richness back into our lives. Rachel: Yes, and it's not just about rough textures. He shows how haptic design can also be about smoothness and movement. He himself designed something called 'Water Pachinko.' It's a tilted panel with little paper nubs on it, all coated in a super-hydrophobic material. When you release a drop of water, it doesn't soak in; it rolls silently and fluidly between the nubs like a perfect silver ball. It's mesmerizing. It's a haptic experience of pure, silent motion. Justine: It sounds like he's designing moments of wonder. Not just useful things, but things that make you pause and just... watch. Rachel: That's the goal. He calls these kinds of materials 'Senseware'—objects that are designed to stimulate our senses and, in doing so, our intellect and imagination.

Justine: Okay, so we've re-thought the function of objects with RE-DESIGN, and we've re-thought the feeling of objects with HAPTIC. This feels like it's all building towards something bigger and more philosophical. Where does he take us next? Rachel: He takes us to the heart of his philosophy, which is rooted in a core concept of Japanese aesthetics: 'Emptiness'. And the ultimate case study for this is, of course, MUJI. Justine: Right, the 'no-brand' brand. How do you even design for a company whose whole identity is about not having an identity? Rachel: You embrace emptiness. Hara says MUJI’s philosophy is 'Nothing, Yet Everything.' Instead of creating products that scream a particular lifestyle, MUJI provides what he calls an 'empty vessel.' The products are simple, rational, and beautifully made, but they are deliberately generic. They don't impose a style on you. Justine: That's it! That's the feeling of walking into a MUJI store. It's so calm. It’s not shouting at you, "Buy me and become this cool person!" It's just quietly offering you these fundamental tools and letting you decide what to do with them. It's not aspirational luxury; it's the quiet confidence of 'this is fine.' Rachel: Exactly! Hara says the goal isn't to create intense desire, that "I must have this!" feeling. It's to create a deep sense of acceptance, of "this will do." And to raise the quality of "this will do" to the highest possible level. The emptiness of the design allows you to project your own life, your own meaning, onto it. He has this amazing quote: "Emptiness means a vessel that is capable of infinite contents." Justine: A vessel for infinite contents. That's beautiful. It puts the user, not the brand, at the center of the story. Rachel: And this idea of creating a space for the user's mind to work leads to his most radical concept: 'Exformation.' Justine: Exformation? As in, the opposite of information? Rachel: Precisely. Information, he argues, is about making things known. But in our world, we're drowning in information. We hear about a topic and we say, "Oh, I know, I know," and we stop thinking. It puts a full stop to curiosity. Exformation is the opposite. Its goal is to 'make the world unknown' again. Justine: How do you do that? Rachel: He describes a project where his students studied the Shimanto River, famous for being one of Japan's most pristine rivers. Instead of creating a brochure with facts about its length or ecosystem—which is information—they created projects to make people realize how little they actually knew. One team superimposed images of an asphalt road onto the river, showing that at its source it was as narrow as a single white line, and at its mouth it was as wide as a 120-lane highway. You suddenly see the river in a way you never had before. Justine: Wow. So information is, "Here's the answer." But exformation is, "Here's a better question." That feels so incredibly relevant today, when we're drowning in half-baked answers but not really thinking critically about anything.

Rachel: And that's the golden thread connecting everything in Designing Design. Whether it's a square toilet paper roll, a fuzzy juice carton, or an empty horizon in a MUJI ad, Hara is using design not to provide easy solutions, but to provoke difficult questions. He's trying to get us to 'un-know' the world so we can truly see it again, maybe for the first time. Justine: It really makes you look around your own room and wonder... what have I stopped seeing? What everyday object in my life is actually a source of wonder, if only I looked at it differently? My coffee mug, my keys, the way light hits the wall. It’s a powerful idea to carry with you. Rachel: Totally. It’s about finding the unknown that lives within the familiar. We'd love to hear from our listeners about this. What's an everyday object you think is secretly a piece of brilliant design? Or one that is just screaming for a 'RE-DESIGN'? Find us on our social channels and let us know. Justine: This is Aibrary, signing off.