Well, their adult content is also pretty different. Think about it.
Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
81–90 of 135 posts
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#82I think it is also hard to be aware that you are in a trend when you are living it. Many of the things that pass as "clean design" at the moment are just a trend, and I promise you that they will look dated soon. This always happens. It happened with 80s hair, with 90s androgyny and it will happen again big text, extreme minimalist, big poetic photo backgrounds and so on.
Exactly. The author is conflating two things which don't necessarily have any bearing on each other - equating fickle trends in design to mastery. Flat icons, low-contrast fonts, parallax scrolls or whatever else are not necessarily an evolution in, much less mastery of web design.
I'm not quite sure it's quite the same as saying that Western designers have "mastered" the web, but my memories of Japanese websites from ten years ago are remarkably similar to how they look today. It seems more relevant that web design in the East hasn't evolved or changed over that period, when western design has.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with the vast majority of your criticisms, I wouldn't be surprised if you're underestimating the language barrier issue. > Is the claim that the Japanese are technologically behind the rest of the world? Why would web development/design be different than almost every other technical industry? Many programming languages are based on English and the Latin script. Programming, and more specifically web pro…
Apart from having Latin-like script I don't think there is much similarity between English and Vietnamese. Either way, isn't Japan also famous for its engineering prowess? I doubt that country with such high engineering competency will lack talent for web development simply because of the language barrier (if there is actually the lack of talent at all). I'm not saying language barrier doesn't exist but if language b…
Unsurprisingly, the companies you listed churn out some pretty terrible code. Square Enix for example has pretty big problems with ffxiv because hacking and botting is so easy. Maintenance windows have gotten longer and are occurring more often in an effort to patch vulnerabilities. Just last week players who were in a specific city accessing their retainers (personal bankers) had their money flushed from their characters by hackers who compromised the trade cluster and transfered it to their bots by listing bogus trash items for millions of gold.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with the vast majority of your criticisms, I wouldn't be surprised if you're underestimating the language barrier issue. > Is the claim that the Japanese are technologically behind the rest of the world? Why would web development/design be different than almost every other technical industry? Many programming languages are based on English and the Latin script. Programming, and more specifically web pro…
Apart from having Latin-like script I don't think there is much similarity between English and Vietnamese. Either way, isn't Japan also famous for its engineering prowess? I doubt that country with such high engineering competency will lack talent for web development simply because of the language barrier (if there is actually the lack of talent at all). I'm not saying language barrier doesn't exist but if language b…
Unsurprisingly, the companies you listed churn out some pretty terrible code. Square Enix for example has pretty big problems with ffxiv because hacking and botting is so easy. Maintenance windows have gotten longer and are occurring more often in an effort to patch vulnerabilities. Just last week players who were in a specific city accessing their retainers (personal bankers) had their money flushed from their characters by hackers who compromised the trade cluster and transfered it to their bots by listing bogus trash items for millions of gold.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#85Good morning from Tokyo! Sites like Rakuten have more to do with in-house politics than Japanese design trends or a love for information density. http://bm.straightline.jp is a better guage of where he Japanese web design trends are headed. As you can see, there's a lot of echoes of flash heavy sites and flat one page designs, but little which represents the special kind of chaos large bottom up created sites like Yahoo or Rakuten. They're more akin to the million dollar website than anything else.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#86I feel like the author wrote this article with a bias that Western websites are better and more aesthetically pleasing because it's simpler.
But those are all subjective matters and Asian users probably prefer what they have.
I come from a Korean background and I visit many different Korean and American websites daily, including the ones mentioned in the article.
While some of the reasons given may seem plausible, non of them were actually convincing.
There isn't really a solid reason why Asian websites look like that.
That's just how it was and users are familiar with it.
Some people like Hacker News because it's simple, while some people don't like it because it's too simple.
There's no better or worse, it's just a preference.
Also, those patterns are not unique to Asian websites. If you go to cnn.com or msn.com, they're not that different either.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#87I think it is also hard to be aware that you are in a trend when you are living it. Many of the things that pass as "clean design" at the moment are just a trend, and I promise you that they will look dated soon. This always happens. It happened with 80s hair, with 90s androgyny and it will happen again big text, extreme minimalist, big poetic photo backgrounds and so on.
"clean design" has been around since the 20th century. It just went away, but came back, and it will go away again and will most likely come back again. So yes, design is in trends, just like any other field has trends, but "clean design" has pretty good odds to come back again. 90s grunge design.....not so likely.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#88I think it is also hard to be aware that you are in a trend when you are living it. Many of the things that pass as "clean design" at the moment are just a trend, and I promise you that they will look dated soon. This always happens. It happened with 80s hair, with 90s androgyny and it will happen again big text, extreme minimalist, big poetic photo backgrounds and so on.
"clean design" has been around since the 20th century. It just went away, but came back, and it will go away again and will most likely come back again. So yes, design is in trends, just like any other field has trends, but "clean design" has pretty good odds to come back again. 90s grunge design.....not so likely.
We might have different concepts of what "90s grunge design" is, but I'd place it squarely in the bucolic/naturalistic/romantic/bohemian tradition, something harking back to a time when geometry (Mother of clean design) hadn't been discovered yet. So I'd say the odds of an eventual comeback are quite high.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#89I think it is also hard to be aware that you are in a trend when you are living it. Many of the things that pass as "clean design" at the moment are just a trend, and I promise you that they will look dated soon. This always happens. It happened with 80s hair, with 90s androgyny and it will happen again big text, extreme minimalist, big poetic photo backgrounds and so on.
I agree with this, but I guess many Asian websites do feel like they're stuck in a 1998 trend. Actually this also seems to apply to music too... when I hear my Taiwanese friends' music, it seems like it still hasn't escaped boy-band era (1998?).
Like "the West" had escaped anything… Justin Bieber? JLS? Even goddamn Take That are still outselling everyone else except newer manufactured pop acts.
People in glass houses should not throw stones.
Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different
#90Wow. So ethnocentrism. Much condescent.
I agree with you.