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| MUJI cleaning kit |
By Yun Suh-young
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| MUJI President Masaaki Kanai / Courtesy of Prain |
If there's a brand whose seeming lack of design shocks people at first sight, it's MUJI. But in fact, that is its intended design.
Japanese lifestyle brand MUJI has a clear and distinct character — it is monochrome, minimal and simple to the core. Its products have no patterns or illustrations. It has no verbose marketing explanations. It's just there and it works.
MUJI's minimalistic design comes from an awareness of nature. And that's MUJI's big strategy which serves as the brand's philosophy.
"Our brand strategy is to be helpful. We try to think of how we could be helpful in different aspects. For instance, the regeneration of damaged earth, depletion of energy, water and food, global warming, urban traffic, industrial and living waste... These are all problems we face and they're human problems," said MUJI President Masaaki Kanai, during a lecture at the Design Seminar held as part of the Seoul Design Festival's programs which ran from Dec. 7 to 11.
"I believe if our lives become beautiful, society will become better. So if there's one skill that is MUJI's strength, I'd say it's creativity to reduce and minimize based on consciousness.
"We started imagining building a product with 20 percent less material and concluded it would still be the same product. It would simply be reduced from 100 to 80 in terms of size or content. For instance, a toilet roll can be thinner in width, a container can be thinner in thickness, a tape can be shorter. We also created cookies using leftover bread crusts. They sold really well."
MUJI observes not the product but the unconscious behaviors of humans, he says.
"That's why we came up with dyeing products using the stems of roses. We also created towels embedded with lines to cut because people use them as rags after the towels are worn out. Interestingly, we noticed designs of household appliances becoming rounder as they are used closer to humans."
MUJI not only designs products but also spaces and even culture.
Last April, it participated in a design project for Narita Airport's Terminal 3. Since the terminal was for low-cost carriers, the budget for creating the space was limited. A huge inconvenience followed for passengers, who had to walk 1.5 kilometers to get to the gate.
"So the question was, how can we get people walk that distance without complaining?" said Kanai. "We couldn't build a moving walkway or escalator due to the low budget. Then we thought of the gym concept. We added phrases like 'work out for free' on the floors. It was met with positive reviews."
MUJI also holds a vision for agriculture and hopes to create a culture that invigorates farming and coexistence with nature. It believes in a future that stems from the local.
"What we think is important is agricultural life. We want people to appreciate labor and respect it, but also enjoy it. We hope to create a community which coexists with nature. Somehow the world has come to devalue blue-collar workers. But the work of white-collar workers will soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. The problem is there is no one to inherit farming. We need to change this by building a local-oriented platform," said Kanai.
"That's why we will be building an office in a rural area in January or February next year. It will be designed as a leveled paddy field. Only once a week will employees come to the office and the rest of the time they will spend in the fields. We also plan to build a house for them."
He said business management styles will also need to change for the future.
"It won't work like it has in the past," he said. "We need to think of what we can do to help the locals, which is why our activities are focused on localization. We want to suggest a happy, healthy lifestyle. That's why we want to build facilities close to the environment, including our new office."
He added Muji has plans to build a hotel next year.
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