What are the first things that come to your mind when thinking about Japanese design?

For me, it’s where Steve Jobs’s taste came from and where my favorite camera was made. It’s Tadao Ando​’​s architecture, Naoto Fukasawa’s Muji, and Hayao Miyazaki’s animation.

For many of us, Japanese design is often associated with simplicity and elegance. These are the qualities that most of us, as designers, appreciate. As you will soon discover in today’s first case study, Japanese people often embrace complexity in daily products.

For many Westerners, Japanese culture is interesting and somewhat mysterious. In today’s second case study, you will experience Japan through the eyes of a UX designer for the first time. Why do marks on the floor indicate where you should queue in a grocery store? Why does every advertisement come with a search bar? Yep, these are the types of questions that a good UX designer would ask when traveling in Japan.

From both case studies, we learned that to unlock the mystery of Japanese design, you must first learn the Japanese language (KANJI, 汉字) to gain trust, truly understand your users, and appreciate the design of QR codes. QR codes? Yes, it is a product created by two Japanese engineers that won a design award.

There are a lot of things we can learn from Japanese culture and design, such as the dedication of Sushi Master Jiro Ono and how the Japanese graphic masters preserved their visual language in the face of rapid industrialization and consumerism.

Hope you enjoy today’s special issue, a quick peek into the culture and the best “products” made in Japan — the philosophy, architecture, consumer brand, animation, sushi, and posters.