15:07 p.m. In front of the JR Shinjuku station, the 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.
Ian and I kept in touch with each other since we met 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 famous publisher in Japan and is also a moderator on MyFonts com forum, together.
After giving 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 Yoshino presented some novels he worked for to Ian.
Ian asked Ozawa some questions about Ozawa’s Calligraphy works and also asked a question to Yoshino about the letter space for Japanese punctuations cited the mystery novel Yoshino 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 in Japan who comes from overseas, 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 coming in spite of a rainy day, Ian. I hope we’ll meet again soon.
P.S.
He also wrote this meeting on this blog “Viewers Like You”. Thakns, Ian!
October 30th, 2008 at 5:19 am
Hi Mr. Okano,
I happened to find your page from a link in your typophile profile.
I am Italian, and I recently make friendship with Ian Lynam, so it was a great surprise to see you met recently!
It’s great to have Japanese (and other designers from countries using non-Latin scripts) doing the effort of publishing in English. This allows a communication previously undreamed of…
Personally, I cultivate type design as part of a wider interest in the history and forms of writing, and although Japanese is really difficult, I like a lot to have confrontations with type designer and people passionate about writing from all over the world.
You can view some old typefaces of mine here: http://www.identifont.com/show?1I7
I am also a big admirer of the work of Tezuka Osamu, and I am very occasionally following a research on his work, and especially the birth of his famous Tetsuwan Atomu (still unpublished in Italy).
Many thanks for your blog! [I have bookmarked it]
Claudio
November 1st, 2008 at 1:47 am
Wow! Thanks for your comment Mr.Piccinini.
I’ve just contacted with Ian by email yesterday. He told me that Calligrapher Carl Rohrs will be giving a lecture tonight, but that’s too bad that I can’t go there due to my business meeting. However, another type related event will be held in the middle of next month. Mr. Gerald Fleuss, who is Chairman of Edward Johnston’s Foundation in UK, and Mr. Eiichi Kouno will come to Japan and will be giving a presentation. So I’m going to go to the event with Ian.
Of course, I know your name on Typophile. I’m glad to meet with you here.
Your typefaces are really interesting to me. What is your inspiration to make your fonts?
I’m a type designer for Latin font. I’m making Latin typeface goes with Japanese fonts.
Yes I also love the works of Osamu Tezuka. He had great talent and remained a lot of great works. The work I love most is ‘Black Jack’.
Kunihiko Okano Shotype.com
November 1st, 2008 at 5:15 am
Again, all thanks go to you.
I’ll ask Ian your email so I may submit you some other question.
I think the most enriching venture is to create a “communion” between a typeface born in a given language/script form and its potential counterpart in another form. I understand designing an entire Kanji set is a big undertaking, but it would be great if more Japanese designers could have interest in both Japanese ideographic forms and foreign forms of other scripts.
In this sense, while Akira Kobayashi is obviously masterful (he even recently revived our Butti and Novarese’s Eurostile), On the other hand, I would love to see how he would draw a Kanji or Kana counterpart to some of his Latin designs. I have given a quick look at the Morisawa library and often the Latin component of Kanji faces is drawn without a care… Obviously the opposite of your case…
I will try to answer your question about my types via email.
About Tezuka we’re quite lucky, having a lot of his works published here in Italy (in the last 10 years, since manga started to be seriously published here just recently), and Black Jack is definitely my favorite, too, together with Atom.
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
I totally agree with you.
I know some of Latin counterpart of Japanese fonts were not so good, and I would like to improve this situation.
I also make an effort to understand Latin letter forms learning Calligraphy and I’ve been considering how the form goes with Japanese letter forms.
Some of Japanese type designers seem to get new inspiration from Latin fonts.
I think Mr. Kobayashi must be able to draw Kanji part. I saw his drawing of Kanji when he worked for Jiyu-Kobo, which is one of famous type foundries in Japan and designed Hiragino-family that is bandled Mac OSX, and I think that is great one. Besides, he can draw Kanteiryu, which is Japanese traditional hand writing style for Rakugo, using a brush.
I’ll send you email later to communicate with you.
Kunihiko Okano Shotype.com
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I am absolutely sure Akira Kobayashi would draw a Kanji set (or the guiding glyphs for it) with complete mastery. As I recall, Akira started as a young designer precisely working on Japanese faces (there is an interview to Kobayashi in Ian’s book “Parallel Strokes”).
My “provocation” was just to see what the peculiarity of your ideographic system, and the sensibility you developed reading also “visually” (with Kanji) could bring to a Latin face (and vice-versa).
I think the biggest ‘trap’ of designers like you and Kobayashi, could fall into could be the idea of rendering a “culturally authentic” and “prefect” Latin typeface, with the risk of suppressing all that you could bring of “Japanese” into it. But I will develop this thought more if I can, writing you an email.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:43 am
I think I could understand what you mean. I’ll wait you send me email.
Kunihiko Okano Shotype.com
November 29th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Hi Kunihiko, did you manage to attend the presentation of Gerald Fleuss with Ian, in the end?
I have talked a little with Ian, I hope to write you soon. Ciao!
November 29th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Hi Claudio,
I attended Mr. Gerald Fleuss’ presentation. I thought it was very exciting one, as he showed a lots of great his works. And Mr. Eiichi Kono showed New Johnston project for London Underground. I’ll report the presentations later, but let me take a little time to compile them.
It was a pity Ian couldn’t attend Fleuss’ presentation due to his schedules. However, we hope we’ll meet together at another type event.
Kunihiko Okano Shotype.com