Too Beautiful to Eat?

Too Beautiful to Eat?, originally uploaded by moriza.

September Wagashi, originally uploaded by bananagranola.

Japan gives a high importance to visual look. How you present things
and how things "appear" are very important. This philosophy is very much
applied to food. If you check out the sweet sction in any store its a visual
treat. They are very detailed at times and their finish is very good.
Not only sweets, but lunch boxes at convenience stores are equally
presented beautifully.

I only really understood the degree of how important the appearance of
food is when I was having Zen buddhist lunch at a temple in Kyoto.
I was eating a sweet and saw that it had some small black granulated
substance all over. When I asked what it was, since it appeared to
have no taste of its own, I was informed that it was some herb just to
provide texture to the sweet.

So its not only how the food tastes, how you present the food and
how it looks, but also how it "feels".

Japan product design

Found this awesome website that has archive of famous Japanese products
especially from 70's, 80's and 90's.
Really good to study the industrial design progression.

http://my.reset.jp/~inu/ProductsDataBase/index2.htm

Packaging design

The first most impressive thing about Japan's design that strikes you is their
beautiful and innovative packaging. Almost everything is beautifully packed, since in Japan its believed that the experience of unpacking a product is also a main part of your product experience(which can be seen in all Apple product designs esp. the iPhone).

Al thought at times its been debated if its wasteful putting so many layers of materials for a product.But Japan is now going green in the aspect too.

Here are some beautiful package designs :

Hi

I am an interaction designer and a student at Carnegie Mellon University currently in Osaka, Japan for 3 months, working on a project for
Sharp corporation. I am studying a bit of Japanese language.
I am also researching on Japanese design and aesthetics.
Through this blog I plan to document my design research.