The Sociocultural Elements Behind Popular Minimalism - a Case Study of Muji

The Sociocultural Elements Behind Popular Minimalism—A Case Study of Muji

Introduction

Minimalism as one of artistic style is originated in the 1960s (Strickland, 1993) with wide influence in the field of visual art, design and architecture. Echoing Mies van der Rohe’s philosophy “less is more”, it emphasizes the removal of unnecessary elements to expose the identity and essences of a subject, which can bring a sense of nature and peace. This school of art has, accordingly, become a more prevalent trend in a social context that resources are increasingly scarce and people are more tired with the hustle and bustle of modern life. A prominent case is the increasingly popular Japanese brand Muji’s minimalist design. The designers of Muji apply minimalism into its product design, which reflects today’s pursuit of nature and green lifestyle. With minimal materials to lessen the burden on the environment, simple shape to highlight the object’s quality per se, and plain color to put on a fresh look, Muji’s minimalism not only responds to environmental protection, but also meets customers’ material and mental needs. The growing popularity of minimalism arises the question why it is popular and should be embraced by people today. My view is that minimalism is a style that deserves promotion since it reduces carbon footprint, appreciates essentials that really matter and escape the chaos for peace.

Material

Obviously, Minimalism has a positive impact on environmental protection since it embraces nature materials and simplifying manufacturing processes. Specifically, minimalist design tends to utilize natural, eco-friendly and recyclable materials such as cotton, linen, wood, and recycled paper to create the harmony and unity between human beings and nature while maximizing the function of products. Also, in order to keep the aesthetics of those natural materials per se and to subtract superfluous artificial decorations, it adopts the waste-minimizing and efficient mode of production by simplifying manufacturing steps and thus cutting pollution. For example, Muji promoted an environmental product “straw straw” which is made from biodegradable material wheat straw unlike the traditional plastics being detrimental to the environment. According to its designer Yuki Lida (2008), “straws of wheat are forms created by nature; they are materials that return to the soil. There’s no waste in either the shape itself, or in its actual existence”. Her words revealed that minimalist design highlights natural beauty by employing natural materials and eliminating any unnecessary waste, which is beneficial for the environment. Its manufacturing process can also reflect its eco-friendly philosophy. Through only basic steps such as straightening, cutting, high-temperature sterilization and simple packaging, the emissions from production are minimized, while the natural features are kept. Compared with colorful plastic straw, this plain wheat straw without decorations offers the aesthetics of nature and simplicity. As such, minimalism meets current environmental needs.

Shape

Beyond its contribution to the environment, minimalism uses simple external shape to enable people to acknowledge what really matters. By reducing to the necessary elements, it exposes the identity of objects to people. To step further, minimalist design takes the practicability and function into consideration. With very simple and regular geometric shape, it maximizes the function of objects. Without fancy appearance, it exposes what is important to people. To illustrate it, Muji’s storage units design gives priority to convenience and practical function but does not adopt any original shape. Muji’s website(2016) also states: “their simple-shape storage range offers multifunctional and innovative solutions for optimizing space and function as well as minimizing clutter and waste.” The simple shape is not equal to simple design since the designer elaborately calculates the space, size, and weight to make it packable, stackable and collapsible. The semi-transparent design also brings convenience in identifying belongings without opening the box. Therefore, it is the minimalist design that endows Muji’s products with user-friendly experience, which uses the identity rather than decorations of objects to meet people’s practical needs.