Cityfont.com announced that the Kinshachi font project has started and will out draft sketches for the Kinshachi font on November 1st. The teaser advertising for the project designed by Openends also showed on its web site, which has a major impact. This striking and interesting photo was taken in front of the Kinshachi.

What is the Kinshachi? Kinshachi, abbreviated from Kin-no-Shachihoko means a Golden tiger-headed with a dolphin body, is a symbol decoration usually on the top of the Japanese old castle. The gilded body Especially, the pair of the ones on the top of Nagoya Castle, located in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture,  central part of Japan, are the best known ones in Japan. So speaking Kinshachi, it reminds me of Nagoya Castle.

The cityfont.com organized by Type Project started the project to make a font for a city in Japan. It launched about three months ago and now they are looking for the city which wants to make an original font.

The founder of the cityfont project, Isao Suzuki, is also a founder of Type Project, started this project with the designers who will join the Nagoya Design Week and those who based in Nagoya city. Suzuki also came from Nagoya city and now bases in Tokyo. In 2010, Nagoya city will mark the 400th anniversary of the old Nagoya Shogunate town launched in 1610. To mark the occasion, they planed this.

Making an original font for a city becomes one of good solutions for the city which is likely to have its own specialty. A city font will work like a dialect which expresses a specific characteristic of the region, which will work as a tool of the brand identity. That’s why, it makes sense to use the Kinshachi as a motif to express Nagoya city.

I’ll follow the project and report it when the draft sketches out.

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.

The talk show began with showing a photo taken Mt. Chokaizan volcano, located on the border Yamagata and Akita Prefecture in Tohoku Region, the Northern part of Japan. Snow on the top of the mountain is brilliant and beautiful, rice fields spread around the foot of the mountain, beautiful rivers run through the field. This place is known as the location of the Academy Award winner movie Departures. Torinoumi was born and raised there.

Osamu Torinoumi is the head of Jiyukobo Inc. (字游工房), is known for designing Hiragino font family bandled on Mac OSX. After working for Shaken, was the biggest photo-type setting machine maker in Japan, as a type designer, he was the one of two co-founders of Jiyukobo under ex-boss Tsutomu Suzuki, was founder of Jiyukobo and passed away in 1996, and now leads the office.

When Torinoumi was a student of Tama Art University, he visited Mainichi Shinbun Co., Ltd., (The Mainichi Newspapers), to see a workplace for making typeface for its newspapers. Torinoumi decided to become a type designer by the word from Masahiko Kozuka, a type designer giant in Japan and worked for there at that time, that “For Japanese people, Letter is like rice and water.” He might remember the scene in his childhood.

Left: The event was held at Japan Braille Library (日本点字図書館) in Takadanobaba, Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo. Right: The event room displayed the slides Torinoumi provided.

The talk show had three parts. First, Torinoumi introduced the history of Letter in China and Japan briefly, then talked about the issues titled “About the topic on the body text which make users feel annoyed.” He showed the tips for how to choose a proper Japanese typeface for body text comparing several kind of typefaces, for example, the balance of black and white, body size and the balance with the Latin alphabet. As for the balance of black and white, usually, Kanji letter becomes darker as its number of strokes is increasing. When setting all Kanji characters, you have to pay much attention to the contrast of the texture. If the contrast is high, it’s not good for a body text. The typefaces Jiyukobo made were really well-balanced and moderate texture. The references he showed were very clear to find the differences among the typefaces.

“I believe that typefaces for body text have played an essential role for developing Japanese culture after Meiji era. In order to provide the contents on the several kinds of medias such as books, comics or magazines, typefaces on these medias must have clearly showed its contents to readers, which means typefaces were a pillar part of Japanese culture,” Torinoumi said. “I hope to make a typeface which can be used for these medias for a long time,” he continued.

In addition that, he told us an interesting episode about typeface design. “I can say typeface has dignity because I know most of people think typeface has dignity,” he said looking back the presentation he gave before. “I asked the attendees whether you think Ishii Ming-cho from Shaken (well known for one of the excellent design) has dignity? then, ninety percent of them answered ‘yes’. I thought it meant typeface is able to have dignity. In order that typeface lives for a long time, it needs to have dignity, I thought we have to take care that point when we design fonts.”

Torinoumi also mentioned about the UD fonts (Universal Design font). UD font is becoming a hot topic in Japanese typeface market because of the design trend in Japan. Especially Product design field tends to design products with Universal Design philosophy. About the trend, “I hope you had better to take care where the UD fonts should be used. I don’t think the UD fonts are versatile. Some of UD fonts might be good for titles, signs or interfaces for electronic devices, but I don’t think they would work for body text of books or magazines,” Torinoumi said.

The second part was a presentation about the project making original Kana font for the printing company, Caps inc. The project started by the request from Caps Inc. for its exclusive use. Torinoumi made two sibling Kana fonts, the one named “Bunrei-Kana (文麗仮名)” is for Japanese literature, especially early-modern literature, the other named “Soukyu-Kana (蒼穹仮名)” is for translated foreign literature. Because the word came from overseas such as character’s name are expressed with Katakana in Japanese language. There are thousands of Katakana words in the sentences on Translated literature. Soukyu-Kana featured distinguished Katakanas compared with Bunrei-Kana.

Before starting to make letters, he read the book titled Kokoro by Soseki Natsume, the one of famous Japanese old literature, to develop design images. The story described character’s compassion, so Torinoumi wanted to make letters one-by-one with much compassion.

Usually, Torinoumi draws draft design with a lettering method. But in this project, he decided to challenge the way he never tried before. First, he drew the skeleton of letter on the 20 millimeter squared guide lined paper with pencil. Then he drew draft design with a brash with method of Calligraphy. By drawing letter with a brash at once, he thought the letter got natural forms featured specific brash movement. At that moment, he thought “I’m fabulous and no type designer who is able to draw such these excellent letters.” However he had to change his mind soon.

Left: The draft design on the drawing paper with 20mm-square guideline. Right: After enlarged them to 48mm square, then input them into PC.

After digitizing the draft letters as a prototype font, the result of the setting was really worse, which made him disappointed. The Kanas he had thought excellent were no good at all. Torinoumi analyzed the reason and found that the draft drawing based on brush handwriting was too close natural forms of Calligraphy. Typeface had to work not as Calligraphy but as a typeface. Having too much handwriting letter forms didn’t contribute to readability. Calligraphy method didn’t work to design Kana letters than he expected. He repeated to revise them, and the revision counted 13 times, which created sophisticated design and elegant forms.

And at last, he demonstrated inking Bunrei-Kana letters with brush.

Above: Demonstration an inking letter technique for the draft drawing. No straight line in almost of Kanas. To keep the draw point head-on, he rotated the paper. He learned this method at Shaken Inc.

Left: Inking with a guide scale, Japanese Menso painting brush and Japanese ink. He inked the Kana with superb skills about 5 or 6 minutes per letter answering visitor’s questions. He rotated the guide scale along with the curve of the letter. Right: After drew outlines, filled inside. You can see a wonderful technique from here (Note: QuickTime Movie).

Left above: The specimen book of Bunrei and Soukyu that Caps Inc. provides. Right above: Bunrei-Kana. The consequence stroke form at the top of letter ”あ” in the draft sketch was erased.
Left bottom: ぶんれい Bunrei-Kana. Right bottom: そうきゅう Soukyu-Kana.

Related article: Type seminor in Kyoto
Related article on Jiyukobo Inc.: Talk show with two type designers, Kataoka & Okazawa.

Dai Nippon Printing Co.,Ltd. announced that Shueitai 秀英体 Ming-cho font family will be available to use with Morisawa’s Passport program. For a starter, Shuei Hoso Ming-cho (Light weight) will be released with Passport in this Autumn, and the rest of the Shuei Ming-cho family, Chuu Ming-cho (Regular), Futo Ming-cho (Bold) and Shuei Shogo Ming-cho （秀英体初号明朝） will be released in 2010. Normal family suite pack will be also released from Morisawa. Dai Nippon Printing, abbreviated DNP and is the largest printing company in the world, has been revised its exclusive font series named Shueitai to release as a retail font, and at last, decided to collaborate with Morisawa for providing Shueitai font series. Shueitai is known for one of two origins of Japanese typefaces, the other is Tsukiji-tai, which has been exclusively used for the products that DNP printed such novels, magazines, dictionaries, packagings and digital contents for over one hundred years.

Shueitai is known as an exclusive font for a long while, but, in fact, DNP already licensed Shueitai to the photo-typesetting maker Shaken few decades ago, which could be widely used for design works, especially publishing field. So designers who were familiar with Shueitai with photo-type setting would like to use them as digital fonts. To answer that request, DNP started the project called Heisei no dai kaikoku 平成の大改刻, means ‘The revival project for Shueitai in Heisei period’ in 2006 to revise Shueitai family for release into public as retail fonts.

Left: Morisawa’s leaflet for Shueitai. Right: DNP provided the catalogs and specimen sheets of Shueitai family to visitors to the business show, Tokyo Digital publishing fare to be held at Tokyo Big Site from July 9th to 12th.

Inside of the small specimen book in the above right photograph. Left: Shueitai Shogo Ming-cho’s Kanji characters. Right: A composition Shuei Shogo Ming-cho’s Kanji and Kana.

Shueitai has really handsome and classical typeface design. It contains Ming-cho (Serif), Gothic (San serif) and Maru-Gothic (Rounded), each style has two or three weight. Ming-cho style’s (serif style) Kana has Calligraphic strokes. Especially Shuei-Shogo-Ming-cho, is a Display Heavy style, keeps sequences of the strokes to emphasize the handwriting stroke forms like East Asian style Calligraphy. On the other hand, Kanji has also dynamic strokes, and I hope you take a look at the detail of the outlines of straight strokes, you’ll be able to find they are not straight but smooth and slightly curved, which gives Kanjis an enriched image and much beautiful impression.

I also would like to show you about what the Passport is. Morisawa’s Passport program is annual license system. It is available to use all of fonts which are included in DVD media by paying license fee (¥52,500 includes consumer tax.) every year. The Passport DVD contains over 350 fonts, not only full Kanji and Kana fonts but also Kana fonts for swapping Kana part of Japanese fonts. This license system is very useful and helpful for users who want to have a lot of fonts at once because it takes about 10,000 yen to 30,000 to buy an average full Japanese retail font. To collect all of fonts covered several kinds of styles, it will take over a few million yen. I can’t afford to buy them!

Left: Moriswa Passport Font Library Poster. You can use all of the fonts in this poster. Right: Fontworks LETS catalog and specimen book I’ve got last year. If you think Japanese fonts are too expensive, I recommend you consider to try Morisawa’s Passport or Fontworks’ LETS license system.

In Japan, an annual license font system is getting popular among designers in recent years. Fontworks inc. is the first provider to start the annual license program known as LETS, Leading Edge Type Solution, in 2002 before Morisawa started Passport program in 2005. Then, some of font vendors followed using similar annual license system. TypeBank and Iwata provided their fonts with LETS. Not only Japanese type foundry but also Housei, mainly deals with Chinese fonts, and JIKJISOFT, is a Korean company, also provides fonts with LETS.

Related article: Visiting the show room of Shueitai typeface.

Tezuka Osamu (November 3, 1928 – February 9, 1989) has been the most celebrated cartoonist of the Shōwa era. He produced an unparalled number of remarkable works, contributing to give shape to what we commonly refer today as the “story manga”: Tetsuwan Atomu – literally “Mighty Atom” – known in English as Astro Boy, Janguru Taitei (Kimba the White Lion), Ribon no Kishi (Princess Knight), Black Jack, Hi no Tori (Phoenix) and many others, which had a huge impact on the child readers during the Showa era. This goes especially for Atom. Without Atom’s conception, we wouldn’t probably have had such a flourishing of animation and manga culture, as well as that confidence on science’s application, technology, of which we are witnessing such a development in the field of robotics today.

The exhibition, titled ‘Messages to the Future’, was a memorial of the 80th anniversary of Tezuka’s birth. It was very nice and I thought it was worth watching. It showed original artwork taken from Tezuka’s manga works, including some draft drawings, presented in chronological order.

Left: The Edo Tokyo Museum is located in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, nearby the Ryogoku Kokugikan Hall, a famous site in the Sumo wrestling field. The museum has a huge diorama built around the theme of the downtown urban life in the Edo period, around 300 years ago. It’s a fascinating way to get acquainted with the old Japanese citizens’ lives and customs. Right: A billboard of the Museum. The building in the background is the Ryogoku Kokugikan Hall.

The opening part of the exhibition features the insects’ sketches done by Tezuka in his childhood. His name Osamu 治虫 was taken from those insects, called ‘osamushi’ (in Japanese it means ‘Ground beetle’). He really loved to watch insects. Even the small sketches in his pocket notebook show the insects’ body depicted in a very detailed way. Later on, he added captions to all of the pictures and compiled them into a book.

The exhibition represented a rare chance to see his early works while he was a college student. The characters in the early works were very cute. I was not familiar with them but I was surprised to see how they looked to me like ‘prototypes’ of his later, more famous, characters. It did not just show his more famous works, such as Atom and Janguru Taitei, but many later works I was not familiar with, and unfinished material as well.

On various artwork panels it may be seen the white-outs painted to conceal mistakes and spots, and the lettering was often added later on, done on separate pieces of paper and sticked on them. By looking at the surface of the drawing paper, I felt like I could almost see how he drew the lines and refine them with the black ink. The ink was really vivid and the balance between black and white was always achieved with very beautiful results. This reminded me of the balance between forms and counters of the letter we seek in type design.

Tezuka’s mastery was not just about in his figurative drawings, but also in lettering, for which he had a fabulous talent. His vibrant title logos on the colored covers reached my imagination and enriched the story’s world. Of course, all of them were made by hand, without any computer aid. Angular logos were dynamic and powerful, they often seemed to express certain features of Atom and Janguru Taitei, of the characters themselves.

Another part depicted Tezuka’s own daily life, showing familiar everyday objects such as pens, ink, erasers, glasses and his coppola cap (widely known as his iconic trade mark), all of them showcased on the desk where he used to draw, and there were photos with his family and the related manga works. The exhibition chronicled also the history of his many residences and relocations. I know that the Tokiwa-sou apartment was in Toshima Ward, which is nearby my town. But, I was surprised to know that the Mushi Production office is very close to my home. It seems it’s just within five minutes by bike! My town, Nerima Ward, is known as a manga town because many cartoonists live in here, but I’d never have told Mushi Production was located so close to my home.

I think that the generation of japanese people most familiar with Tezuka’s works should be now at least in its 40s, or older. I used to watch Tezuka’s anime such as “Janguru Taitei Reo”, “Fushigi na Merumo-chan” or “Ribon no Kishi”, but all of them were re-broadcasted as replicas in my childhood. Unfortunately, I have hardly seen Tetsuwan Atom, because the series was old and black-and-white, and rarely reprogrammed. My generation (people which are now in their 30s) preferred to watch robot anime such as Gundam or Macross instead. Coming to manga, I loved to read Doraemon and Toriyama Akira’s manga, Dr. Slump and Dragonball. They were a huge success for children in those days.

However, Tezuka’s manga had a great influence on me. They taught me a lot of things which I couldn’t get in school. For example, although its visual language may be a little strong, Fushigina Merumo-chan featured sexual education notions, while Black Jack gave me a strong sense of professional duty, humanity and compassion. As a child, I got interested in Black Jack because I’d sometime got sick and was forced to stay in hospital. My illness was not so serious but these stories encouraged me a lot. Of course I’m fine now.

The catalog and post cards that I bought at the museum shop.

Tezuka’s work represented a tremendous influence on the following generations of cartoonists. This means that I have read a lot of the manga which were influenced, directly or indirectly, by the work of Tezuka. I guess the influence continues to be carried on today, to the latest cartoonist, and flourished as animation and manga culture, which can now be enjoyed by many people across the world. He left a thousand of ‘Messages to the Future’ through his works. I would say Tezuka Osamu must be regarded as the father of manga.

Revised on July 19, 2009.

— Gratitude. My Type Design Pen Pal Claudio Piccinini in Italy revised my poor English text after I posted it to my blog, and translated it to Italy for Italian Tezuka Aficionado’s website. Thanks Claudio! —