Media Skin is the sixth product in the Au Design Project. Designer Tokujin Yoshioka offers new textures in mobile phones through surface finishes and special coatings. The handsets feature the world's first 260,000-color QVGA OLED screen to showcase 1seg or Lismo video clips.

As comfortable as a second skin. Handsets have never felt like such a natural extension of our body. The shapes and substantial textures of Media Skin mobile phones also make users look more attractive. A "skin" enveloping new media, it represents much more than a mere product. Like contemporary art, it offers an immersive experience, in this case through new tactile sensations and beautiful visual images.

Media Skin, the sixth-generation Au Design Project for handsets that stimulate our emotions. What makes the design concept compelling are new finishes, which awaken our emotions. A matte look and fresh textures are presented through textural orange or white coatings with fine particles of silicon, or soft black incorporating special urethane particles. When the flap is closed over the controls, the contrast between the two halves (the smoky screen and colorful flap), which embody minimalistic beauty. The handsets have nicely balanced proportions, unprecedented in handsets to date, but they are also quite full-featured and offer impressive specs: the world's first QVGA OLED screen, support for electronic transactions, 1seg TV viewing, and more -features that would probably have been impossible without engineering design management from an early stage. Looking at these models, we can imagine how Tokujin Yoshioka's design ideals came to life through development. These are products that point the way to new design solutions in response to recent sluggishness in the domestic handset market. [Chiaki Murata, A03 unit leader]