The japanese clutter photos though are all of older businesses. Older smaller businesses accumulate clutter in the US or western Europe just the same. Just like your home, a small business accumulates stuff - at least tools, cute objects, postcards sent by customers and friends, orphaned stock that has been for sale for 20 years and would be more likely to sell on ebay but the manager is busy, etc. The main reason is probably that they are not a priority to the manager who has been slowing down and feels busy enough with more important tasks. They are not "an aesthetic" - not deliberate. Just usually a product of circumstance.
Occasionally they are an aesthetic but then again in the US also - see for example The Pawn Shop restaurant in San Francisco (where you bring a token object to be admitted).
Also, the effect is magnified here by the relatively cramped spaces that Japanese small businesses typically occupy.
Clutter is really beautiful. I wish there was a tutorial on how to design cluttered interfaces. Everything is about minimalism nowadays. I like how in some interfaces you don't have a weird icon for deleting things, you just have "del". 3 letters are worth an icon.
Minimalism is in direct opposition to first-order retrievability.
Very common example: home kitchens have cabinets, commercial kitchens have shelves and racks. When speed really matters, the cabinet doors need to go.
Our home kitchen has cabinets that are mostly transparent glass. Worst of both worlds? The clutter is easily visible but access is slowed. Really though, I think there is a purpose: doors keep the dust and grease of the kitchen environment away from the items in the cabinets.
Having things in plain sight is really critical to keep most people on track.
If people work without things in plain sight, it is because they have committed what is out-of-sight to memory, which is kind of an ongoing burden.
My tool chest is sort of a hybrid - the drawers are sort of an index, and when you open the "screwdrivers" drawer, they are all in plain sight to choose (and return).
I wish more house cabinets had wide shallow drawers to solve other problems this way.
But why is speed the only thing that matters all the time?
Kitchens still have cabinets. Where are my cluttered websites at?
I don't think every single website needs "speed." Specially when I go to some websites sometimes and they have a 2 megapixel PNG as favicon but a minimalist, border-rounded flat designe Wordpress theme.
I think you are overestimating the ease of building UI controls. WPF for Windows represents the most advanced system that Microsoft developed, it's very complicated, and there's no real equivalent API for web. The concept of WPF's Visual allows deep customization of a control and lets you build your own primitives. You could build your own Clippy.
It's ok for every person to have their own preferences on this. Gmail has an information density setting, I always keep mine at "compact", and I can't relate to anyone who uses another option. But it doesn't bother me that they do.
At home, feeling relaxation is important. Some interface, vibe is as important as the interface like music apps for example. You don’t want some monotone ui that can kill vibes. Music UI is probably the hardest to do
I'm suddenly reminded of this article:
https://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-design-is-so-differe...
Man I hate clutter so much. Or I should say, I really like being in a tidy, uncluttered space. But my own house is pretty cluttered. Not sure how that happens.
It takes continuous time and effort to keep things tidy.
People who say it doesn't are wrong. They have invested time in their "clutter technical debt" to set up systems that lower time and effort.
Like taking the time to figure out where everything goes. And when things stop working, they take the time to revise the system. I think of rush "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice"
You like it uncluttered because you live in a cluttered space.
Isn't it like this with most cultures. People from the outside lock on to something in a foreign culture, idolises it, promotes it as unique and special to an embarrassing level. It completely ignores that each Japanese person is just as unique as any American, Brit, Italian or Dane.
That being said, there is something beautify about the clutter that comes out of Asian cities with their limited space and abundance of people, which allows odd specializations. Though you can fine some of the same beauty in small shops and business in a city like New York, where space is also at a premium.
> For Morse, the lack of stuff was less a product of aesthetics than of economics. He was frustrated that other critics had failed to consider ‘that the nation is poor, and that the masses are in poverty.’
> By turns reverential and condescending, ideas of Japan’s enlightened design sensibilities swept Western society.
Western colonizers are obsessed with the myth of the noble savage. It’s the exact same treatment Americans gave to natives - oh look how minimal, how simple, how in touch and in tune with nature they are.
Or perhaps we as people just tend to idealize foreign cultures, because from our perspective they're different and interesting. You could view it as patronizing or endearing. You don't have to look far to find the exact opposite happening all over the world.
> Western colonizers are obsessed with the myth of the noble savage. It’s the exact same treatment Americans gave to natives - oh look how minimal, how simple, how in touch and in tune with nature they are.
Ah yup. The famous noble savage that were still engaging in torture and freaking cannibalism... Weirdly enough that fact is often missing from history books / online discussion.
"How is it that the same culture that reveres minimalism also delights in maximalism, too? "
That temple is a great example of maximalist minimalism. Sure there's great detail, but it's all neatly framed in a simple layout, with a repetitive pattern, etc.
Actually that sums up all the examples. They may be messy in a way, complex, detailed etc, but they're still constrained to simple patterns and layouts (square shelving, etc), so not really maximalism at all, in fact.
Nice article!
My, Earth really is full of things.