In January 2021, Morisawa and Sha-Ken announced they would ‘co-develop’ the Sha-Ken font library for OpenType (English press release here), due for release in 2024 in celebration of the Japanese […]
Japanese Typography
Stroke Fonts Forever
The start point is the end point. The first time I saw Japanese stroke fonts in action, I had the same revelation Steve Jobs did when he visited Xerox PARC […]
Japanese Typography
Sha-Ken finally launches a website
Sha-Ken finally got a website, listing themselves as Sha-Ken Co., Ltd. Big deal so what, except that it’s not 1991 or even 2001. A font company doing business without a […]
Japanese Typography
The Seybold Legacy
I was fortunate to write for the Seybold Report in the last few years of its original incarnation in Media PA. Jonathan Seybold was gone by then but the editors […]
Apple
Power and Responsibility and Cultural Respect
It took me a while to fully appreciate the issue that Twitter user Yoshimasa Niwa was describing. At first glance I and many others assumed that setting Japanese over English […]
Japanese Typography
Apple’s Once and Future Japanese Variable System Font
2020 is the coming out party for Apple designed OpenType variable fonts, both the SF Pro and SF Compact system fonts and the all-new New York font shipping in iOS […]