Truly Deeply/Madly

Docomo. Cre­at­ing Organic Tech­nol­ogy.
More and more we are see­ing mobile phone based com­pa­nies com­pet­ing to slim line prod­ucts to feel organic and seam­less attempt­ing to keep up with Apple’s dom­i­na­tion of the mobile phone mar­ket. User inter­ac­tions with prod­ucts that are effort­less and seam­less has become the chal­lenge and Docomo (Japan’s pre­mier provider of leading-edge mobile voice, data and mul­ti­me­dia ser­vices) has taken on this idea from a dif­fer­ent angle.

Docomo’s Touch Wood Mobile Phone
Announced on Docomo’s web­site, Docomo’s released that it has devel­oped a mobile phone pro­to­type made with the sur­plus wood of trees culled dur­ing thin­ning oper­a­tions to main­tain healthy forests. The pro­to­type was cre­ated in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sharp Cor­po­ra­tion, Olym­pus Cor­po­ra­tion and “more trees,” a refor­esta­tion project founded by musi­cian Ryuichi Sakamoto and others.

The cypress wood body of the pro­to­type, named Touch Wood, fea­tures excel­lent dura­bil­ity and resis­tance to water, insects and mildew thanks to spe­cial three-dimensional com­pres­sion mold­ing devel­oped by Olym­pus Cor­po­ra­tion. Con­ven­tional nat­ural wood is not suit­able for use as mobile phone bod­ies because they tend to wear out quickly. Each Touch Wood hand­set fea­tures its own dis­tinc­tive grain pat­terns and nat­ural col­or­ing. No arti­fi­cial col­ors or paints are used, so the cypress retains its orig­i­nal nat­ural appear­ance and aroma. The wood also has an attrac­tive shine that is cre­ated dur­ing the com­pres­sion process.

The Touch Wood is made from the sur­plus wood of trees culled dur­ing forest-thinning oper­a­tions. This new com­mer­cial use for thinned wood, which tra­di­tion­ally has only lim­ited appli­ca­tions, helps to pre­serve other wood resources while strength­en­ing the health of over­grown forests. So far, Touch Wood pro­duc­tion has used wood culled from the Shi­manto for­est in Japan’s Kochi Pre­fec­ture. The for­est is man­aged by the more trees project.

Even more impres­sive is the TV ad that accom­pa­nies the organic Touch Wood aes­thetic and rein­forces the brand per­son­al­ity of Touch Wood.

As a brand expres­sion in its purist form, Docomo have cre­ated a prod­uct with infi­nite design aes­thetic pos­si­bil­i­ties. As a piece of tech­nol­ogy in com­pe­ti­tion within such a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket place, lets only hope the user inter­ac­tion is a beau­ti­ful and sim­ple as the organic wood implies.

Tim Wood
Design Cre­ative

Tags: Brand Agency, Brand Communications, Brand Design, Brand Experience, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, Corporate Image, Creating-Organic-Technology, Docomo, Docomo's-Mobile-Phone-Prototype, Graphic Design Melbourne, Interior Design, Japan, Japan's Kochi Prefecture, leading-edge-mobile-voice, Melbourne Brand Strategy, mobile-phone-market, Olympus Corporation, Organic, Organic-Brand-Product-by-Docomo, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shimanto forest, tim-wood, Touch-Wood, Truly Deeply

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 27th, 2011 at 7:00 am and is filed under Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.