@rizkytanrian6092

1 year ago

As a UI/UX and web designer in Japan, I can tell you based on my experience is that many of the reasons are due to the many Japanese companies are obliged to print everything as it is required by the law, or they’re afraid that someone will make a claim if they didn’t write it clear enough, and there’s something about the language that makes writing a formal sentence seems longer (yes short and smart catchphrase exist, but it only act as a welcome, if you want to mean a business in Japan, you have to write everything). In the graphic design side, yes Japanese characters just like Chinese are rather larger and have more details than Latin letters, so they have less options in fonts and you can’t have a too small font or smaller details of the characters may not be visible hence making it indistinguishable with other characters. But back to culture, does culture affect this a lot? Yes, because often times the companies tends to provide most information possible to avoid customer claims that are dreaded by Japanese business, and some law that also made in order to avoid those claims. One of my friend who studied Japanese social capital mentioned that Japanese people, despite of its welcoming and harmonious attitude actually have a low trust and very suspicious of others (or in this case a website). A website that does not provide detailed information often gets avoided, and on it also made worse by the fact that many Japanese business actually plays in grey area in a very unfair manner, often time they will trick you with colorful or encouraging title, but makes the fine print complicated to exploit you, even big companies that people used most of the time (several greatest offenders are mobile network, insurance, housing, etc), now imagine if they don’t write the fine print… a society where people don’t usually voice their opinion will tends to just be quiet when exploited, would instead be extra careful to choose website with more information than less, and when they voice their opinion they would be gets too petty that the company would instead write the details to avoid that. It is that circular relationship in Japan that shape the country’s website. Ah and why they avoid dark and not-dense? Maybe it is the Japanese design aesthetic that in scenario where they finally want to make a minimal website, a black on white is the most popular choice, or a soft gradation with low contrast, perhaps some dull color palette are what considered to be stylish, chic and even elegant in Japan.

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