[Sigia-l] Google introduces animated icons on homepage

[Are Gulbrandsen]

On 25. jul. Eric Reiss wrote:
> Here in Scandinavia, we're particularly keen to produce "clean"
> design with lots of white space. Invariably, I hear from colleagues
> in Asia (particularly Japan) in response to something we've done,
> "Great design. When are you going to finish it?" The suggestion seems
> to be that white space is a waste of space.
>
> I don't pretend to fully understand this penchant for clutter, but
> there certainly seems to be a sociological factor playing out here.

I think you have to be more careful when generalizing. Take for  
example the popular Norwegian portal
http://www.startsiden.no/

In the middle of july it was ranked as the third most used portal in  
Norway:
<http://www.tns-gallup.no/index.asp? 
type=tabelno_url&did=185235&sort=uv&sort_ret=desc>

The first two on the list being an unusually visually cluttered  
newspaper site (Norway's largest newspaper) and no.msn.com:
http://www.vg.no/
http://no.msn.com/

I can't really se a big difference between the east asian examples  
and the norwegian examples. - At least not enough of a difference to  
support a theory of scandinavian clean design or correlation between  
interpersonal bubbles and web design.  :)


Best Regards,
Are D. Gulbrandsen
The XML-group,
Center for Information Technology Services
University of Oslo