Japanese Web Design Chris Coyier

blog

January 31, 2023

There is a dissonance I’ve heard brought up more than once. It goes something like this: Japan is this beautiful place, renowned for cleanliness, simplicity, and sparse, orderly design in physical spaces. But digital design out of Japan is cramped, cluttered, and garish. Why?

Someone, presumably named Sabrina, has published some research into this at sabrinas.space. “3 leading possible causes”:

  • Lack of fonts and lack of capitalization to help with visual hierarchies. (Although doesn’t hold up to other areas that use CJK characters).
  • Risk-averse culture requires more information-dense design. (Although doesn’t hold up to regional neighbors).
  • Smartphone culture evolved differently, continuing a text-heavy web that came about sooner.

    • It’s nice to see some research rather than just guessing, even if there is still a lot of questions. I’d love to see a tech journalist take this on, as complimentary research. Feels like you could get a hold of some Japanese design teams and just ask them.

    Updates:

  • The website from above was an artifact of the main event: this video.
  • There is a reaction video also worth checking out.

    • 🤘

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