Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization announced the results of the Good Design Award 2009 on October 1st. Good Design Award is the only annual comprehensive design commending system in Japan, and the award-winning works get the right to show the G-mark for its promotion on the several kind of media by paying annual fee. The award winning works in 2009 contained three font related works.

Driver’s font
Driver’s font designed by Type Project collaborated with Denso, is the supplier mainly car equipments and air conditioner, got the Frontier Design Award.

Driver’s font was designed to support car drivers in 2007 as a prototype work, which is now in progress to develop, based on the assumption in light of the research for driver’s situation.

While driving a car, a driver needs to concentrate gazing forward and have to glance at information on the equipment panels such a speed mater or car navigation system. The driver recognizes the information by remembering the image what the panels showed after glancing at the panels. The driver repeats these actions concentrating forward. The interval to check panels will change depends on its car speed. To keep the impressions that driver imprinted, the letters needs to be required clear legibility and generating strong impressions. Driver’s font gives driver stabilized visual images by modulating letters along with car speed. When the car in high speed, the letters become a bit bolder to enhance strong images to the driver, on the other hand, the car is staying, the letter looks calm by showing the letter thinner.

Driver’s font has three styles, Urban mode and Enthusiast mode, plus Enthusiast Italic “Power Band”mode for Sports mode. The letters in Enthusiast mode enhanced the characteristics of the letters such as the terminals and thickness of the strokes and serifs, compared with the Urban mode, which helps drivers be able to easily catch the letters on the panels in high speed.

Reference: AXIS magazine vol. 136 contains an article on Driver’s font.

Iwata Universal Design font
Iwata Universal Design font got the Life-Scape Design Award. This font is the pioneer of the Universal Design font trend in Japan. Universal Design font, abbreviated UD Font, is becoming popular in Japanese typeface market after Iwata’s UD font was released in 2006. Above all, Product design field welcomed to use UD fonts designing products with Universal Design philosophy. Iwata collaborated with Panasonic, is the major home-electronics, audio and visual device maker, to make its UD fonts in order to help those with weak-eyes and aged-eyes. The other type foundries followed to make UD fonts.

Fontpark 2.0
MORISAWA Fontpark 2.0 designed by Yugo Nakamura (tha ltd, yugop.com) in 2008 is a unique attraction interface. User can play to draw a picture using strokes and elements of letters from Morisawa Font Library. And it is available to save the picture to the web site, then visitors can watch the archives replaying making process of the work. Enjoy this font park.

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.

Do you know the name of typefaces that you can see in downtown?

A type designer Naoyuki Takeshita is a notable designer not only making his Japanese font named Take:竹, means bamboo which was named after an initial of his family name 竹下 Takeshita, was distributed by Morisawa, but also his blog titled Machide mikaketa Shotai, 街で見かけた書体 means ‘Typeface found in downtown’. He introduced a lots of typefaces and fonts which were on billboards, traffic signs or shop signs while he was hanging around downtown. He often posted photos on typefaces he found to his blog with a comment using a lot of humor. As he is a typeface designer for Japanese font, he knew almost of typefaces not only old hot metals and photo type setting but also the recent digital fonts, so he can tell what the name of the typeface quickly.

Takeshita’s exhibition titled Setagaya de mikaketa Shotai 世田谷で見かけた書体, means ‘Typeface found in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo’ was held at the Setagaya Culture Life Information Center. The project started last July by the request that Hasegawa, was the organizer of this exhibition, asked Takeshita for searching typeface in Setagaya, because Hasegawa was interested in Takshita’s blog and wanted to held the exhibition. The project has been started last August, then Takeshita came to Setagaya several times to take photos. The exhibition was compiled by the best selection. As a pre-event, he also started a blog titled Setagaya de mikaketa Shotai 世田谷で見かけた書体 from the beginning of last December, he continued to post some photos and comments in the same way he had done on his blog before until the end of last year.

Left: Takeshta talked about this project. Right: Hasegawa showed the map that they used while the research. The map was almost tattered because of overused.

The talk event had two parts, the first, Takeshita showed the typefaces which he had seen in Setagaya by category, billboard sign, traffic sign, railway sign and public sign. He introduced the typeface we don’t know, and signs we usually don’t take care about, such as a mark on the road called Doukai, 道界 which indicates boundaries to divide properties.

The second, he picked up the things which he was interested in, non-typeface letters such as logotype and hand writing letters, and introduced the food shop or restaurants he had take a lunch while he walk through downtown. ‘One of funs when I researched downtown was looking for a nice restaurant or a food which are famous in Setagaya,’ Takeshita said. ‘I didn’t search any restaurant in advance at all, I decided the shop for a lunch after coming to the research place. ‘If I found a nice billboard or facade, I tried to enter the shop and had a lunch’, he continued.

‘I found the main purpose of this project was not knowing what kind of typefaces are in Setagaya but finding  characteristics of Setagaya by looking for typefaces’, Takeshita said looking back the research. So, I asked that ‘I’ve heard you had found a lots of typefaces on signs around Tokyo before this project started, did you find the difference among Setagaya Ward and the rest area where you had ever visited? Plus did you find the specific trend for typeface in Setagaya Ward?’ He answered that ‘As I mentioned, the main purpose of this project was to know about the specific trend in Setagaya, but it was a pity that I couldn’t find it, but I found different topic. I live in Saitama prefecture (northern neighboring Tokyo), so I could find the difference that each public region has own regulation way where the public signs should be placed.

Left: The exhibition space. Right: The direct mail of the exhibition and the novelty chocolates that delivered to visitors. The chocolate imitated the mark on the road Doukai 道界.

According to Takeshita, some of who saw this exhibition wanted to see what is the situation about another district, as there are 22 wards in Metropolitan Tokyo except Setagaya. I thought it must be hard work for Takeshita. I knew he spend a lot of time to finish this project. It was not easy work at all. However, I also know he can’t stop looking for typeface in downtown, he must be going to start another project soon because he is always searching typefaces and fonts everyday. I hope he will plan another project which features area he will be interested in.

Related topic.
ICOCA Card with typeface “Take”

The rest family fonts of AXIS compact series, AXIS Compressed fonts were finally released on Wednesday, Type Project inc., which is the foundry of Axis font, announced on its press release. AFAIK, no true compressed Japanese digital font for retail has ever seen before in Japan. AXIS compact series, includes AXIS Condensed, already got the Good Design Award in Communication category in 2008.

Some of famous global companies, Apple Japan, Mazda, Wii by Nintendo, have been using AXIS font Basic family, has squared width, for their commercial applications, web sites and TV commercials. And at the end of last year, NTT Docomo also started using AXIS font for its mobile phone devices as a system font. Now, AXIS font could be used for the devices made by Sharp only, but NTT Docomo announced that all of the future Docomo devices will have the AXIS font.

You can download trial fonts of AXIS font family from Type Project site. You need to put your info, includes your name, your address, OS version you are using, to the submit page’s dialog boxes that marked red color. I recommend you use Google translate, if you had been stuck to input them. After submit your info, Type Project will return info mail to your address, which includes the link for the trial fonts. The trial fonts include about 1,000 Kanji characters, Joyo-Kanji only, but it is available Latin alphabet part, Hiragana, Katakana and sign symbols. You will be able to see what the fonts look like. Of course, the regular fonts for retail are available over 7,000 Kanji characters, Adobe-Japan1-3.

Type Project relaunched its web site. And AXIS inc., is the exclusive dealer for AXIS fonts, also relaunched www.axisfont.com and indicated the Latin family of AXIS font, includes Italic family, will be available soon.

I went to attend TypeCon Seattle 2007 last year. This was the first time for me to go a type conference was held on overseas. I got a chance to take type critique named “Ten minutes type critique” known as a regular event on TypeCon. Now you can find the audio and specimens on the critique that was held on TypeCon Seattle 2007 on YouTube.

TypeCon Seattle 2007: Typecrit 1 of 4

I recorded everything so that I could listen them after I’d back to home, because I didn’t think I could listen everything due to lack of my English skills,

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 a regular 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 at that 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 learning 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

The Kazui Press, which is the most famous letterpress house, especially Latin composition, in Japan, relaunched its website at the beginning of April. For the renewal of the website, several specimens of the hot metals they had were added to it, 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.