The AU Design Project is behind some of the most attractive mobile phones on the market - Naoto Fukusawa's Infobar and Marc Newson's Talby. Now it's time for another entry into the beautiful design sweepstakes: Makoto Saito's slick Penck. The black-and-white editions are fine, but it's the silver model that really seems to be attracting a lot of attention (and it's the one this writer lusts for the most). The most pleasant feature, if you can call it a feature, is that when closed you can barely tell that it's a phone, looking more like some sort of space-age buttonless mouse.

Surprisingly, it includes all the bells and whistles that we've come to expect in our keitai life, including a megapixel camera. How Saito has managed to keep everything so well hidden is a mysterious joy to behold. It's refreshing to see a company paying so much attention to the style of their products - and the same can be said for all aspects of the company, as the AU service shops in the city have recently undergone renovations that has seen them transform into spacious white environments.

Continuing with this trend, KDDI, the parent company of AU, is getting ready to launch its brand new KDDI Designing Studio in Harajuku. The March 4 launch will be accompanied by special events involving the world-renowned UK design outfit Tomato, which will include an installation ("YOU-ME-WHO?"), a talk session (on March 6), and a party (March 26). As for the building itself, it looks like it will host some interesting conceptual ways of creating a product. Open to the public, it will serve as a space where you can interact with designers, and find out more about - and maybe influence - the design process. The top floor will include a new branch of the growing Wired Cafe chain.

Last year's "Braniff Airline" exhibition held at the Parco Museum in Shibuya was certainly a treat. The vibrant colors used by the airline, seen in the Emilio Pucci-designed uniforms and the non-traditional painting schemes on the planes themselves, made us long for the days when the business of air travel wasn't purely an economic one. H'action, the company behind the show and the merchandise - still easy to find in the design corners of a great many shops in the city - is prepping for its next big exhibition.

April at the Parco Museum will see the promising "Kami-Robo Expo 2005," featuring a Tomohiro Yasui-created, wrestling-influenced world of 15-20-centimeter paper robots that duke out in a ring. As a sort of prelude, this month's Ginza Graphic Gallery exhibition will be on designer Katsunori Aoki, who has produced a few Kami-Robo fighters (some of which will be on display).

An important stop for anyone who appreciates good design has to be the Design Gallery, located on the seventh floor of the Matsuya department store in Ginza. The gallery has been around for years, and they usually host insightful exhibitions that manage to come off as quite authoritative, even within the confines of such a tiny space. A recent show offered a fascinating look at the tools - pencils, pens, brushes, cutting instruments - of over 40 Japanese designers. It was quite remarkable and surprising to see how these objects often complemented the personalities of each individual in a revealing way.

Adjacent to the gallery is the Design Collection, a retail area where you'll find a wide range of goods, including a lot of representative work from the annual Good Design competition. This is where you'll find the best of the best, and it offers a glimpse at what will undoubtedly be featured in countless magazines in the months to come. One of the more interesting books they have on display (alongside an attractive collection of magazines) is "The Principle and Practice of Design." Released in conjunction with the 600th exhibition held at the Design Gallery, it offers a bilingual look at the designers included in the show, as well as a DVD full of interviews.

Knee High Media is the publisher of Paper Sky, a travel magazine known as much for it attractive layouts as for its creative content. This esthetic can also be seen in their Book 246 travel bookstore, the Cafe 246 right next to it, and in Mammoth, their magazine for kids by kids. Now we have Baby Mammoth, launched last month, and targeted at families with newborns. The interior design of the magazine comes as no surprise: it's a clean layout, featuring gorgeous photography.

The latest issue of the Japanese magazine Studio Voice (Vol. 351) should be of interest to the readers of this column, as it features a cover story (which takes up most of the issue) on architecture and art. Even though the magazine is Japanese-only, it offers a very nice photographic survey of the works of some of the big names in Japanese architecture today, which makes for a nice reference tool.

The articles dealing with art are mostly concerned with these ongoing architectural exhibitions: the Mori Art Museum's "Archilab: New Experiments in Architecture, Art and the City" (until March 13) and Art Tower Mito's "Archigram: Experimental Architecture 1961-1974" (until March 27). If you can't make it to the Mori Art Museum, the Japan Design Net site offers a lengthy photographic tour of the "Archilab" show.