At the Shakujii Station on the Seibu Ikebukuro line in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, I was waiting for a graduate of Reading University in UK, Émilie and her friend Xavier to have an afternoon meeting. Since Émilie designed Japanese characters for multilingual font as her graduate work, she wanted to ask Japanese people about her design during her private trip to Japan.
Last week, Kimura, who is my junior in Kyoto City University of Arts, told me about Émilie. As Kimura had been in Typo/Graphic Studies in London College of Printing, now known as London College of Communication, he got email from his former-classmate in UK that Émilie wanted to ask Japanese about her design when she come to Japan. It would be nice but I thought she supposed to ask her request with type designer for Japanese font in order to get proper advice, so I arranged to visit Type Project, is the foundry known for making AXIS font, plus asked a type designer Okazawa of Yokokaku, who left Jiyukobo and started his office last month, to join our meeting because I hoped the meeting would be a good chance sharing type design topics.
In fact, I knew Émilie because her classmate Eben Sorkin, who I met at TypeCon Seattle two years ago, emailed and asked me to help Émilie for making Japanese characters last year. I couldn’t get any reply for a long time, but I was glad to hear she would come to Japan.
The meeting began with the presentation of the cityfont.com web site that Type Project launched last month, and then Suzuki of Type Project introduced about the Driver’s font. We asked Emilie some questions about the type design trend in European countries and the situation type designers are facing now. As I was also interested in the curriculum of the MA type design course of Reading, I asked her about it and the difference with the one of KABK.
We talk about Émilie’s work.
Émilie introduced her type design named Coline showing her great small specimen book. It was really nice and interesting work, I thought there’s no Japanese typeface like this style, and Coline might be fit for a magazine that featured natural organic items or casual fashion which women are interested in. When I saw the letters in large size, strokes seemed a little too dynamic and wild for the body text, but small size letters set in the column box, it seemed to be natural and calm, and strokes created comfortable rhythm.
She asked some questions about what the key factor is for making proper Kana forms, then, Suzuki mentioned that the importance to think about the order of the strokes in Kana because the stroke consequences came from the order of strokes would affect the forms of Kana letters. And added some tips for designing Japanese letters.
Left: Émilie explained about her design. Right: Left to Right, Xavier Antin, Émilie Rigaud, Satoru Kimura, Isao Suzuki of Type Project, Hideyo Ryoken of Type Project, Yoshihide Okazawa of Yokokaku.
It was only for three hours visiting in Type Project but we enjoyed having chat with them, and Émilie and Xavier also seemed to enjoy this meeting. I hope the meeting would help for her work and we hope to meet again in future. It would be nice we could meet again somewhere in the world, say at a type conference. And I’m looking forward to seeing Coline will be released.
Speaking a type designer based in overseas who designed Japanese font as a non-native speaker, it reminds me of Joachim Müller Lancé, who got Morisawa Award. I know the difficulty of making typeface in non-native language as I’m also one of designers making Latin alphabet. I expect those try to design Japanese font like Mr. Lance and Émilie will gradually increase, and I also hope I’ll be able to use Japanese font made by a designer who is non-native Japanese language. I’m sure they bring new styles which I have never seen to Japan.
The specimen book of Coline. The PDF of this specimen is available to download from HERE.
January 9th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
[...] at the ShoType English-language blog is an article about an MATD alumna’s visit to Japan. Nice little summary of non-Latin typeface design at Reading, from an outsider’s [...]
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:33 am
I’ve only just now found this article through the TypeOff trackback. Thank you for a very interesting article. I had looked at a PDF specimen of Émilie’s Coline and had wondered what Japanese type designers would make of it. I am Korean, so to me the Japanese kana are somewhat more familiar than to Westerners, but I wouldn’t dare try designing them, at least not without taking a long time to study the forms. So I was really impressed that Émilie put in a lot of work to learn the script and to design a typeface for it.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Hi Jongseong,
Sorry for belated reply. I know your name on Typophile. You seem to be very fine to East Asian languages.
Émilie is still working on to make Japanese part. She sent me email few weeks ago about the questions how to make Japanese font. She might take a long time to accomplish making fonts but I’m very looking forward to see her work. There are much difference between Asian scripts and Latin alphabet but I thought it is very important to know each other script when we set both of languages text together. I hope to develop mutual culture exchange thorough making fonts.