The Puzzle of Japanese Web Design 242
I'm Not There (1956) writes "Jeffrey Zeldman brings up the interesting issue of the paradox between Japan's strong cultural preference for simplicity in design, contrasted with the complexity of Japanese websites. The post invites you to study several sites, each more crowded than the last. 'It is odd that in Japan, land of world-leading minimalism in the traditional arts and design, Web users and skilled Web design practitioners believe more is more.'"
Not my experience (Score:5, Informative)
> Japan's strong cultural preference for simplicity in design
What? It's the exact opposite.
This is my only real complaint about Japan. I can't stand the shops here. There are colored flashy signs everywhere, and you can always hear at least a dozen different adverts at the same time.
Likewise every device is ridiculously complex. My fan has 6 buttons and a remote control. Just to blow air! And the toilet has a dozen buttons and two knows to adjust seat and water temperature. Everything is completely overdesigned.
Re:Looks less cluttered translated (Score:4, Informative)
Not so sure (Score:3, Informative)
Just for comparison, look at the Japanese Ministry of Health [mhlw.go.jp] and Ontario Ministry of Health [gov.on.ca] web page. They both start out with a similar header, announcing what page you are on and showing the search function, but the Japanese page takes about half as much space. Then on the Japanese side it's just a solid wall of information from top to bottom. I question their color choices, but as someone else mentioned, Japanese like bright colors.
The Ontario web page then has a huge, stock-photo section with a small little section on each one. What a waste of space. I should say, to me it looks fine, but the same information could have been presented in significantly less space, and the photos, while pretty, are nothing more than that.
So I think it's just a matter of Japanese trying to fit the most amount of information into the least amount of space. Or maybe they don't trust stock photography of smiling people, I don't know.
Re:Not my experience (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ever been to Tokyo? (Score:2, Informative)
Something about being able to read the characters makes it seem less cluttered. I used to think signs in Chinatown were overcrowded and very loud, but when I spent an extended time in China and learned to read, it no longer seemed very cluttered. Easier to read from a distance, though.
Re:Cities reflect websites (Score:1, Informative)
I was thinking about how I liked the presentation of Japanese or Chinese books but then I also remembered that the characters were vertically aligned, which is next to impossible to do with simple HTML + CSS today. I mean, there's a part of the CSS3 specification defining the problem of vertical aligned characters with right to left or left to right flow, but it's a part of the norm which is ignored by almost any browser.
Half of their typographical techniques are just crippled by the current state of the implementation of web standards and I think that, maybe, if they are implemented and used, those website could render a tad better.
Re:Korea is the same but worse (Score:1, Informative)
The Korean web is worse than Geocities. Allow me to explain why there will be a special place in Hell for Korean web designers.
Re:Do not RTFA, the summary is TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Because IKEA is swedish?