The new issue of the the Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom–run semi-annual style journal Fantastic Man includes a profile of Konstantin Grcic, the German industrial designer who seems to charm every journalist he meets (myself included). While the writing is occasionally ridiculous (“his is an easy elegance, the kind that makes a young man at once formidable and compelling”), the story includes several interesting tidbits about the 44-year-old Munich resident. For instance: Grcic owns 14 bicycles—his favorite is a Tyrell—and he’s currently designing a new urban bike for Muji, which he says “has to be totally utilitarian, yet still look incredibly cool.” Also: he used to hang out at The Hacienda, the Factory Records–owned locus of the 1980s Madchester scene, while a student at the Royal College of Art (which he calls “very boring”). If you want to read more, you’ll have to pick up a copy at the newsstand or shell out $38 for a subscription—Fantastic Man doesn’t post its articles online.

Photo: For the issue, Grcic posed for a series of performance-based works by the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm.

Last month, I fessed up about my wallet-zapping Muji addiction, which has grown substantially worse since the Japanese retailer opened its latest New York store only a few blocks from Metropolis HQ. Well, now I’m really in trouble—the “no brand” brand announced yesterday that its has a new online store. Naturally, Muji-holics living outside of New York are thrilled—even though, at the moment, there are only about 300 products available for North American customers. Still, I can tell you from experience: all those pen refills and cute PET travel bottles start to add up fast…

See also: Metropolis’s April story on an unlikely new collaboration between Muji and Thonet, with designs by Konstantin Grcic and James Irvine.

Since Gary Hustwit’s upcoming industrial-design documentary, Objectified, is all about products and the people who make them, here is a helpful (though incomplete) cheat sheet to what you’ll find in the just-released trailer: Naota Fukasawa’s hand, the wall-mounted CD player he designed for Muji, a Panton chair, an Apple laptop, a Mercedes-Benz (wild guess—it looks like the Stuttgart museum to me ) convertible, a Leica camera, a Braun radio, an Oxo peeler, Jasper Morrison’s Air chair being manufactured, a mess of cell phones, Muji and IKEA stores, Smart Design’s Flip Mino pocket video camera, and an ad for an Sanyo’s waterless Aqua washing machine. Oh, right, and Karim Rashid, too. God knows he needs the publicity.

See what else you can spot!

With its first Tools for Living store opening tomorrow in Soho, Design Within Reach has effectively cornered the market on products for what seems to be a growing subdemographic: rugged obsessive-compulsives (mostly men, to be frank) who prize a beat-up Barbour wax-wear jacket as much as a neat line of color-coded Muji pens. The shop might as well be named Tools for the Stubbly Urban Dandy. Read more…

By now, you’ve probably heard that, last weekend, JetBlue held a dry run of Terminal 5, its new 635,000-square-foot, $743 million facility at JFK. Around one thousand dyed-in-the-wool Jetters checked in to nonexistent flights, diligently filed through security stations, and stood in line to board phantom planes, all to help the building’s engineers, Arup, work out circulation and way-finding kinks before the opening on October 1. In return, there were free JetBlue caps. Naturally, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday. Read more…

The MoMA Design Store’s fall catalogue hit my mailbox this afternoon, and, as usual, it’s got a lot of great new stuff to drool over. There’s a rubber-encased Seiko alarm clock that’s quietly enthralling, and a ribbed-aluminum side table that manages to evoke corrugated cardboard without looking cheap (or channeling Shigeru Ban). And Mark Sanders’s foldable Strida bicycle makes a lovely cover model, decked out in MoMA-exclusive safety orange. But there’s something amiss here. Dear reader, please turn to page 31.

Read more…

Is the humble nap slowly gaining legitimacy in American society? Scientific evidence is mounting that taking a midday snooze has a host of beneficial health effects. Some enlightened companies are actually encouraging workers to slip a power nap into their workdays. And last week, the Boston Globe published an amusing guide to the perfect nap, with a handy timeline of sleep stages. Now, if only designers would get in on the action. Read more…

Industrial Facility’s LED night-light for IDEA Japan

Fans of Muji’s minimalist housewares will want to check out the exhibition on the London design firm Industrial Facility that opened Friday at the Design Museum. As creative advisor to Muji, Industrial Facility has anonymously designed more than 50 items for the Japanese retailer’s lines of furniture, appliances, kitchenware, and electronics. Read more…