A typeface designer Yasuyuki Miyake’s personal exhibition titled “文字は生きている：Moji wa Ikiteiru, means The living letters” was held at Nerima Art Museum in Nerima ward, Tokyo. This exhibition had two parts, the one was themed “Letter Design” and the other was “Letter Art.”

He designed a lot of Japanese typefaces for more than fifty years, which were displayed in “Letter Design” room and showed 10 new typefaces as well. The famous round edged san-serif typeface family “Jun“, from Morisawa Library, and “JTC Win” family, from Nis Library were also included. The large letters on the presentation boards were hand-trimmed black papers. He seemed to think it was important to draw letters by hand. And he showed some lettering works that designed names of sports athletes, entertainers and famous persons for several kind of magazines.

Meanwhile, there were a lot of print art works, which looked like silk-screen printings, in the “Letter Art” room. He described several scenes with Kanji letters like 風: wind, 雷: thunder and Kanji letters had meaning of natural things. These letters were dynamic as if letters were alive and they were very unique and had humor feelings. I could feel the difference between these two parts ”static and dynamic.”

Left: Post card and Specimen sheet were provided at the gallery. Right: Nerima Art Museum

In Japan, speaking Calligrapher, it might remind you of Japanese style Calligraphers. However, even in Japan, there are many Western style Calligraphers.

The exhibition titled “The works of Calligraphers Guild” was held at Gallery Kubota in Chuo ward, near the Tokyo station. More than 200 works got together and were displayed in four rooms. There were several styles of expressions such as classic, modern, relief and a mixture work Japanese and Western styles, and very interesting.

One of Calligraphers I would like to see, Izumi Shiratani showed a beautiful work in the exhibition. Her work was really cool and had gorgeous lines. As I’ve been acquainted with her since I met her at some party a few years ago, so I asked her to meet there and asked some questions about her work and activity in these days.

Besides the question for her work, I asked her about designing letters. I told her that I would need a Calligraphic style Logotype for package design in the future, so I’ve been looking for a Calligrapher to draw letters for a logotype. I would like to know her opinion about whether Calligrapher would like to have opportunity to design logotype or not. We exchanged opinions what the difference is art work and design work, what problem is to design logo work, what art director would be able to do for Calligrapher when we work together.

She welcomed to design and told me some opinions as a Calligrapher, and then make me clear there’s nothing to worry about. I’m glad to hear that and I would like to work with Calligraphers to make Logotypes in the future.

The direct mail and Thank you card for this exhibition.

This exhibition goes around to Sendai, Okayama, Osaka.

I had a few chances to get back to Kansai where my home town is in the past few days. I used to get on Hankyu Railway while I’d been in Hyogo pref., but now it is better to use JR West line for me because of easily access if I’ve got on Shinkansen, is the bullet train in Japan, when I get back to my home town from Tokyo. I always enjoy to watch the information display, which ran some commercials and information, on the ceiling inside a car.

I found a unique commercial for ICOCA card, is a prepaid card for JR West. A unique platypus character, named “Ico-chan”, introduced ICOCA card to the commuter how useful it was. Ico-chan explained about the ICOCA card with call-outs and subtitles. The subtitles used typeface “Take”, which means “bamboo”. “Take” has really unique straight strokes, but the skeleton is not stiff and really natural to my eyes. “Take” have Japanese taste and casual feelings so I would like to use it for package designs such as for Japanese snack foods or tea.

The typeface “Take” won the silver prize of Morisawa award 1993, which had been designed by him and was released as one of Morisawa Liblary last year. The Take’s type designer Mr. Naoyuki Takeshita knows typefaces well about not only Japanese font also Latin typefaces, he taught me what the typeface was immediately when he and I hanged around downtown together. He has his blog and posted several photos on Japanese typefaces which he found in downtown where he hanged around. Called “街でみかけた書体: Machi de mikaketa Shotai”, means the typeface which he found in downtown, is really interesting blog post. It was a pity it is Japanese language only, but you can see several kind of Japanese typefaces on the blog.

I found the results on the 4th Founder Award Competition in Chinese type design from Jongseong’s blog post on Typophile.

Mr. Akira Kobayashi of Linotype joined this competition as a jury last year, and he introduced it on his blog. Since I’d read it, I’ve been looking for the results of the competition.

The resultc of The 4TH “Founder Award” Competition on Chinese font Design and Poster Design
Some photos on Jury

The outline of the competition in English
The 4TH “Founder Award” Competition on Chinese font Design and Poster Design

I was surprised that some of winning designs have gray tone! It reminds me of a Sumi-e, means Ink-and-wash painting. Usually, we should design letters without gray scale tone for digital fonts, but if these design could be used for Flash movies or on monitors, designing letters without gray tone might be nonsense. It seems like these strokes with ink bleed and blur express time goes by. Indeed, we can use gray scale or color to make fonts using BitFonter.

You can also see the results of the past three competitions.

I’m always thinking about how I should design Latin characters when I saw Japanese characters. I enjoyed I imagined how I should design Latin characters looking at these winning designs.

I don’t know well the situation on Type design in neighboring countries China and Korea. Now Arabic type designs are very interesting. I hope I’ll be able to show you a topic on CJKV fonts and typography.

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15:07 p.m. In front of the JR Shinjuku St. East ticket gate. Ian didn’t come yet. The time we promised to meet was already passed. I called him. I thought this was the first time I called a native English speaker. “Hi! where are you now?” He seemed to wait at the Central East ticket gate. I thought my explanation might have been wrong to tell him where the meeting place was. And then, I found he was coming toward me.

I kept in touch with Ian since I met him last meeting, but we didn’ t have enough time to meet together due to our hard schedule, so we couldn’t arrange the meeting for a while. I’ve been wondering whether the meeting was held for sure, but we decided the meeting day at last! As I thought it was a rare chance to meet with an interesting type guy, I decided I would take my friends, Yutaka Ozawa, who started solo project for Japanese font recently, and Akira Yoshino, who worked for a publisher in Japan and is also a moderator on MyFonts com forum, together.

After each self introduction, we shared each other’s works. First, Ozawa-san showed his East-Asian style Calligraphy works, he also do Western Calligraphy though, and he showed his new type design in progress. Second, I showed Ian my portfolio included my package designs, logo designs and digital type faces that I’m going on. Ian seemed to be interested in my works, so he told me some opinion and asked some questions. And at last Akira presented some novels he worked for to Ian.

Ian knew some Japanese rumor concerns a famous font well. He asked Ozawa some questions about Ozawa’s Calligraphy works and also asked a question to Yoshino-san about the letter space for Japanese punctuations cited the mystery novel Yoshno-san brought. Ian often used Japanese text for his works, so he seemed to be interested in Japanese fonts and typography. Ian asked us some questions from Western style point of view. He pointed out Japanese custom. He seemed to be curious the difference between Japanese and Latin text.

I felt silly that I couldn’t explain fluently about my works in English. There seem to be some type guys who comes from overseas in Japan, so I would like to communicate with them. I’ll try to get a chance and plan a meeting at some point.

Thank you for your coming in spite of a rainy day, Ian. I hope we meet again soon.

P.S.
He also wrote this meeting on this blog “Viewers Like You”. Thakns, Ian!

I went to attend TypeCon Seattle 2007 last year. This was the first time for me to go a type conference overseas.
I got a chance to take type critique named “Ten minutes type critique” on there. Now you can see the audio on the critique from YouTube.

TypeCon Seattle 2007: Typecrit 1 of 4

As I didn’t think I could listen everything due to lack of my English skills, I recorded whole part so that I could listen after I’d back home.

Eben Sorkin, was one of designers joined 10 minutes critique, asked me to get the audio and he proposed we should provide this audio to every one who was curious about this event. And then, he compiled several photos, specimens, and movies to edit this audio and uploaded to YouTube.

The 10 minutes type critique is an usual event of TypeCon. Three critics provide their opinions to the attendees watching submitted type designs. Matthew Carter, John Dawner, and Akira Kobayashi were the critics this time. Every attendee have 10 minutes only. They explained their concept and asked critics several questions within 10 minutes. The audience also asked their question about attendees works.

photo：The member list of 10 minutes type critique on the wall of front desk.
I wrote my name third place after someone quit to attend. Great!

This critique was very useful and helpful designing typeface. Not only I got several opinions from three critics but also it was useful to hear the opinions to the other designers.
I could understand easily where he important point was or how I should compare with the difference in the element. I’m pretty sure it is worth listening.

I couldn’t believe some famous type designers attended this type crit. Gabriel Meave, who is a really gifted type designer, attended this crit to show his font “Darka”, as you know, got the TDC prize. I though he didn’t need to join this crit because he could do everything! The other two Mexican type designers were also talented. AtypI conference will be held in Mexico City in next year. I guess type design in Mexico must be better to improve drastically.

At the farewell party of TypeCon Seattle, Mr. Dawner told me I should bring my revised type design to Buffalo. Thanks, Mr. Dawner!

P.S.
Related thread on Typophile.
TypeCon 2007 Typecrit video

Ian Lynam, who I met at the meeting with Christian Schwartz last month, send me his book named “Parallel Strokes.” He interviewed with Akira Kobayashi of Linotype for PingMag and I’ve been aware of who the interviewer is since I read that interview. I didn’t think he lives in Japan. I just said hello to him a little while before leaving the meeting, so I emailed him and got an appointment with him.

Ian compiled 19 interviews, which are for PM or several magazines, with various type designers and various graffiti artists in “Parallel Strokes.” I enjoyed to know various background how they started type designs and typographic graffiti at first. Some part of the inteview with Akira Kobayashi seemed to be edited in order to fit the PingMag’s page, but a lot of photos and some sketches, which were not included in PM, were added in Parallel Strokes. And PS includes some interviews with Underware or DIAM. DIAM is one of my favorite artists since I’d read that interview. I was able to know DIAM to read the article for FontShop magazine that Ian interviewed a few years ago.

Ian send me his book “Parralel Strokes” and some novelty goods

(Left above) Parallel Strokes Poster (Lower right) The DIAM’s photo reminded me of The FontShop catalogue Issue 005. DIAM’s work covered this issue.

Ian is not only a graphic dsigner but also a type designer. He digitized Cooper Black Italic Swash. And he also have his label WordShape.

For big fan of ancient Buddhist art, especially for those who hunt National treasures, it was very exciting season and busy to go museum where hold the exhibition during Golden week holiday. I went to Tokyo National Museum in Ueno park to see the Exhibition of National Treasures from Yakushi-ji Temple. Last week, I went to Shin-Yakushi-ji Temple to see the Twelve generals, and this time, I could see the bronze sculptures of Nikko(日光), means the sun, and Gakko（月光）, means the moon, made in Hakuo period (A.D.672-686) as National Treasures.

That’s a good chance that you’ll be able to see the back shot of the sculptures. In most cases, a statue set on the proper place in the hall of temple, you would not be able to see it from behind of it. However, in this exhibition, every statues were standing alone and displayed without their nimbus, besides, there was a deck in front of the Nikko and Gakko so that I could see on the same level with both of statues. I could tell these looks between the one when I saw on the same level and the other when I could see from lower point.

In my opinion, I’m sure that Buddha statue images with viewing from the twelve quarters angles were beautiful. I walked around every bodhisattva statue to find out the best view, but it was hard to decide it. As bodhisattva statue twisted the body, so the outlines of the body gradually changed at every step I took. I enjoyed the variety of the lines.

At the Kichijouten (吉祥天), is also designated National Treasure, booth, it was hard to see it because a lot of people gathered in front of the Kichijouten picture like a wall. The museum staffs made the visitors move along not to stack in front of it, but the visitors tried to stay there as much as possible. Indeed, it was worth watching.

The number of exhibit works in this time was small, but almost of them were designated National Treasure or Important Cultural Properties. So I’m pretty sure there must be not-to-be-missed. This exhibition is showing till June 8, 2008.

After watching the Exhibition of Yakushi-ji temple, I went to another exhibition in Tokyo National Museum on “The Lantingji Xuin(蘭亭序)”, which is one of the most well-known East Asian style Calligraphy works, but as I was exhausted to see the Yakushi-ji’s works, I couldn’t stay focus on watching the works of the exhibition “The Lantingji Xuin”. It was a pity that this exhibition will finish on May 6th, but I was relieved to know that another exhibition will be held at Edo-Tokyo Museum in this July named “The Palace Museum. A well-known treasure on Calligraphy” and will display “The Lantingji Xuin” works. I’ll try to see them again.

NTT DoCoMo Inc., one of cell phone service providers in Japan, announced to start its new corporate logo at the beginning of July. The DoCoMo’s new logo was set by only lowercases modified circular shape, changed its brand color into red named Docomo red.

When I looked at the current logo design at first, I thought it was a unique logo design. I loved its funny style which mixed uppercases and lowercases and dots were around the letters. I’m going to buy the next Docomo’s model, but it’s a pity I can’t see the current logo any more. I think the brand name would be better just only “docomo” without “NTT.”

After leaving from Shojudo, I went to Shin-Yakushi-ji Temple in a bit of hurry to get in time for closing time. The master of Shojudo told me it should took around 30 minutes by walk. It was hot day, so I was slightly sweaty. Watching Japanese wisteria trees budded almost be showing signs of blooming, I went through a path to take a short cut and got on a hill where Shin-Yakushiji Temple stands on quietly. I felt Shin-Yakushiji was smaller than I expected.

The front door of the main hall was closed, so I entered into the room from left side, and then I could see the Juni-Shinsho statues: The twelve divine generals, stood on there surrounding the Yakushi-nyorai statue as a principal image. The inside of the room was dark and just lit by a few candles, but I was impressed these statues. Usually, I pray a principal image before watching statues and inside the hall, but I couldn’t wait. I was really into these statues.

I guessed Japanese Mangas and animations were influenced by the Buddha statue images. For example, the Bassara general, which is one of the Twelve divine generals and I though it was the most cool, reminded me of the Katsuhiro Otomo’s “AKIRA”, which is SF manga, and the Four Heavenly Kings of Todai-ji Temple reminded me of the Gundam, which is the most well known Japanese robot animation, and I could see some similarity points between their images. One of the reasons I like the Juni-Shinsho statues was that I can tell the looks on which have characteristic each. I thought they seemed to play their roll saving the principal image Yakushi-nyorai as if the characters in a story would try to save a heroine.

My short trip to Nara was a very good and comfortable during the season of brilliant green leaves and fabulous weather.

I’d visited to almost of the temples in Nara city, but the last one I’ve never been was Shin-Yakushiji, which is famous for several Buddha statues of National Treasures such as Yakushi-Nyorai and Juni-Shinsho: The twelve divine generals, so I’d been looking forward to seeing them.

After I got off the JR line at the Nara station, I happened to get a free sightseeing guidebook of Nara city looking for a map of neighboring at JR Nara station. I was interested in a photo on an ink stick, which was called Sumi in Japan, and I decided to come by the shop on my own way to Shin-Yakushiji. The shop’s name was Shojudo “松寿堂” and was in an old town. It took about ten minutes to go there from the station by walk.

I hesitated to enter the shop for a while because its facade seemed to be an old-established and really high-toned. However, the master of the shop was very happy and welcomed me to enter the shop. The shop room was very beautiful and traditional Japanese style, there were many Japanese-traditional furnitures such as wooden step-like chest of drawers.

The master showed me some products, which were the same ones in the guidebook, and explained how to make them. According to the master, the Sumi made in Nara was called Nara Sumi, which has been for more than 600 years since Muromachi period. Shojudo has been making Nara Sumi scince 1865 and is a royal warrant shop. There were a few Sumi makers in the district a few years ago, but now Shojudo was the only shop around there. And then, he showed me a Sumigata, the decorative wooden molds made from Asian Nashi, Asian pear, used to form ink sticks.

As I remembered that Prof. Hermann Zapf used a Japanese ink stick in the movie “The Art of Hermann Zapf”, I told him that I’ve heard some of Calligraphers, who are not only East-Asian style but also European style, used a Japanese Sumi as a black ink, so I proposed him that he would be better to introduce about Sumi to Calligraphers who lives in Europe area. The master was very interested in this topic.

I bought two pieces of Sumi shaped lovely form of Japanese deer, which lived in Nara Park and was considered sacred of Kasuga Taisha shrine, in a small box of paulownia wood.
It was a pity that I didn’t have much time left to get untill the Shin-yakushiji temple would be closed. I hoped I would like to visit again so that I could get enough time to chat with the master.

(Above) The wooden shop signages and “Noren: 暖簾”, which is a store curtain hanged on the shop entrance, read “古梅園: Kobaien”on another shop that I found out during return to the Nara station from Shin-Yakushuji temple. (Lower right) The letter “墨: Sumi”, which means ink stick.

Tokyo Type Directors Club (TDC) exhibition 2008 started April 4, 2008 at ggg gallery in Ginza. There are many unique and interesting typography works and type designs included TDC prize award winning works. Especially, award winning TDC prize Latin typeface design Frida, which was designed by Fernando De Mello Vargas who is a student of Reading UK, was very interesting multi lingual font. Frida supports Latin and Tamil scripts. I met Fernando at the party after the Christian Schwartz’s presentation, but I didn’t have enough time to chat with him, so I hope to meet him again.

And Jiyu Kobo, which is one of the most respected foundries in Japan, also got the TDC prize.
This exhibition continued through April 26(Sat.) and will be held at ddd gallery in Osaka Dojima from June 13(Fri.) to July 23(Wed.), 2008.

I didn’t think that I could meet him in Japan. One of the most famous typeface designers Christian Schwartz who based in New York, whose presentation was held at 5tanda Sonic event space in Gotanda, Shinagawa. There was huge audience to see his show in spite of hard rain.

Wearing a lovely “I love N.Y.” T-shirt, he started to show some customized fonts for some major companies like Esquire, Deutsche Bahn (the German national railway company) and the Guardian, and explained the background of these customized fonts using a lot of specimens.

One of them, a typeface called Haçienda was developed for the Guardian, which is a famous news paper in UK. Haçienda had dynamic family more than 100 not only wide range weights but also several kinds of styles like Serif, Sans and Slab styles, which would be released by the end of this year named as Guardian. Christian told us a full story of the design process from beginning to end.

After the show, I met him to ask some questions and showed him my portfolio to get some opinions. He seemed to be interested in my heavy weight style fonts and told me some opinions. Thanks for the opportunity to meet with you, Christian!

(Left) Christian explained the difference among three styles of Hacienda. (Right) A brochure for the audience of this presentation and a Christian’s autograph on it.

And I must say thank you to Chris Palmieri of AQ design studio. He was a coordinator to hold Christian’s presentation in Tokyo. He was very familiar with Latin typefaces and had some interviews with type designers that he was interested in such as Jeremy Tankard, which was on AQ’s web site. He helped me out a lot to have communicate with Christian. He was a very nice guy and really kind to me.

Christian’s presentation was held again at Robundo inc., which is a well-known publisher on typography in Japan, in Shinjuku Ward before his leaving from Japan due to a request by a member of Society of Typography, Japan.

The Kazui Press, which is the most famous letterpress house in Japan, relaunched their website at the beginning of April. For the renewal of the website, it was added several specimens of the hot metals they had, so you can see specimens on not only several classic and traditional typefaces, but also ornaments and wood types with the photos of hot metals for letterpress.

Seibu Railway, which runs through in northwest Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture, started new signange systems to change its sign boards using AXIS font as a main font.

The brilliant blue color of the sign board looks good and very striking, but I don’t know whether the commuters have been aware of this change or not. When I saw the new design sign board at Nerima-Takanodai station of the Ikebukulo line, which is near my office, I couldn’t see at a glance it was AXIS font because I didn’t have enough skills to find out the difference of Kanji characters among Japanese Fonts. However, I could tell the Hiragana “た” as I knew the characteristic Kana forms of AXIS.

The weight variation is only R (Regular) style and Latin parts are Helvetica. The route map on the sign bord is also the same. The old sign boards seem to be replaced by the new design, which is in progress now.

AFAIK, this is the second case AXIS is in use for a railway signage. The first one is Hisatsu Orange Railway in Kumamoto and Kagoshima pref., which started new sign boards that were designed by an architect Yasuyuki Kawanishi in 2004.