Foundation for Personal Mobility and Ecological Transportation – Barrier Free Initiative contains a useful library of Japanese standard public information symbols. Here are some useful subpages:

• Standard information symbols – Main page
  • Public Facilities (公共、一般施設)
  • Transport Facilities (交通施設)
  • Commercial Facilities (商業施設)
  • Tourism, Culture, Sport Facilities (観光、文化、スポーツ施設)
  • Safety (安全)
  • Prohibition (禁止)
  • Warning (注意)
  • Mandatory (指示)
• Symbols for priority facilities
• Communication Board – a set of cards for people who can’t speak Japanese or with disabilities to communicate simple ideas, such as “what time is it”, “I need help”, “I have lost item”…etc.

Please refer to their terms of use (in Japanese) to learn about the licensing issues.

via @crema

Earlier in June I blogged about mygengo.com and their online tweet translation service Twiyaku. I argued that the service was not ideal for Corporate Japan to depend on, since it is difficult to translate technical terms and maintain a consistent image of the corporate identity.

Apparently I underestimated the demand and how much people like the idea. According to Asiajin’s report, myGengo has raise 50 million yen (or $583,000 USD) from a group of angel investors. That shows the confidence that these investors have on the growing demand in human translation service for micro-blogging systems. Since the introduction of API (application programming interface) in April, which allows companies to programmatically integrate tweet translation into their software and operation workflow, the daily request has gone to 10,000 per day.

Source: 人力翻訳「myGengo」、国内外の投資家から5000万円の出資

YASUKAWA-KUN (やすかわくん), created by Yaskawa Electric Corporation, is a Dual-arm robot that serves you soft ice-cream while smiling at you. You can choose different combinations of flavor from the touchscreen, then the robot will slowly and joyfully follow the sequence and fix you a perfect cone of ice-cream.

According to it’s Youtube description, YASUKAWA-KUN will be working at Tokyo Summer Land from 2010-July-25 to Aug-22. Make sure to run there if you want to see this smiling robot happily serves you a cone of soft cream.

You can follow KASUKAWA-KUN on Twitter.

An animated road work ahead sign that looks like a worker waving a growing stick at the drivers. Taken in Japan.

Thoughts: Does Japanese drivers response to humanoid signage better than wordy ones? What is the history of Japanese road work signs? How well does it work in day time vs. night time? Weather? Low visibility conditions?

SPAM Japanese Package

On the classic SPAM luncheon meat can, there is a burger made with a slice of SPAM. However on the localized Japanese version of the package, it is a luncheon meat sushi.

This is an example of branding for culture, where the designer acknowledges the different food consumption habit, that in Asia SPAM is more often served with rice than burger buns. However this SPAM sushi package is only available in Japan, perhaps because the company figured that the Japanese market is more sensitive in cultural difference and would be more receptive to special localized branding? I lived in Hong Kong for years and have never seen similar localized branding in the supermarket.

Wikipedia discribes various SPAM eating habit in Asia in this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)#Asia

Signage of the Shizuoka City Museum of Art. Love the minimal, coherent, rich of white-space design.

The designer is 柿木原政広. The design agency website is at http://www.10inc.jp/.

According to the information desk personnel, the logo resembles the shape of Mt. Fuji, rather than a caramel pudding that I have first imagined. The logo designer also infuses this idea into the custom typeface, so the “UO” and “MS” couple in the museum name also has similar design. You can see more of the custom typeface in the designer’s website.

Shizuoka City Museum of Art

• Website: http://www.shizubi.jp
• Tel: 054-273-1515
• Address:
  〒420-0852
  静岡市葵区紺屋町17-1葵タワー3F
  Aoi Tower 3F, 17-1, Kouya-machi, Aoi-ku, Shizuoka, 420-0852 JAPAN

This is a good example of how people from different countries would perceive different meanings on abstract concepts, such as the association between colour and season. However, when I tried to find related data and research on the Internet, there are not too much of them except from the fashion industry. Furthermore, the data is usually:

• Single sourced — a single fashion designer or company “forecasting” the trend of new colour for next Spring. It is not a general choice of many many people.
• Context dependent — in this case only for fashion, but not for general purpose.
• Country/culture specific — usually a preference from western world, but not many other countries.

I want to do a tiny research to find the answer of this question: What Colour Would You Choose to Associate with the Four Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. I want to gather the data from people all over the world and discover such patterns. My Hypothesis is that, despite of personal preference, people from different countries should have different general patterns related to their geographical location, weather, culture, custom, history, and so on. I hope that at the end of the research I will be able to publish the data, and allow designers of all sorts to use more suitable colour for specific target audiences.

Stay tuned to future posts with the tag “season colour“.

[2] photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/xerones/141357725/

I was pretty excited when I saw the Phone Book for sale in a bookstore at Shibuya.

I have previously blogged about the Phone Book, which is a children book that uses a iPhone or iPod Touch to provide attractive interactions. The package has a hard paper “shell” in the form of a book, as well as a slot to slide in the touch screen device. Please read on to my previous blog post about the product and my comments.

Phone Book is selling at ¥2980, or approximately $34.50 USD. It is designed and manufactured by Mobile Art Lab.

The message is “Don’t park your bike in front of our property”.

However, people can have different approach to convey this message. The first group of pictures [1-3] are taken from a residential condo, while the second group [4-9] is from an elementary school only one block away from that condo.

Group 1 — Condo

The sign from the condo uses a very aggressive, rude voice to write the message. The translation of the sign is:

ココに自転車、バイク置くな！
手続を経て撤去する

(DO NOT park your bicycle or bike HERE! It will be removed and requires formal procedure to claim it)

In case you are not familiar with Asian/Japanese comic expression, the Curved Cross symbol actually means anger and frustration (see image [10]). The sign maker added that symbol to show the absolute intolerant of any unauthorized parking in front of the property.

Group 2 — Elementary School

The signs are much softer and cuter as they are hand drawn by the elementary students. I could feel quite guilty if I have to park my bike here, as if I have disappointed a bunch of little kids who are just trying their best to beg me not to do so.

Error Message

What about error message? I have an example of angry error message: a Windows error message dialog telling you can the Flight Schedule Screen is having some hardware failure, as well as “There are unused icons on your desktop“. Scary and frustrating. Cute error message: Twitter’s famous Fail Whale.

Do you have some fun example to share as well?