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S U S H I (latin+hiragana+katakana)
Posted by Miguel Hernandez in
7 Mar 2004 — 11:41pm
7 Mar 2004 — 11:41pm
Hola amigos typophiles,
this is my first non latin greyscale pixel font. The challenge was to develope a Yummy bold caps font for titling, who can work well for Japanese language readers.
If anyone can read or recognize if this first designs sketches works, maybe someone who know about Katakana or Hiragana, can make some critiques here..every help is welcome!
Muchas gracias,
mh 
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8 Mar 2004 — 3:13am
Hi, Miguel.
I'm Japanese. It is a very pretty nice font. Is the resource of this font the sketch of the handwriting style?
The font of the handwriting style is in fashion in Japan.
Well, There are some wrong points.
"SU", "SE", "SO". The right-hand side upper part point (Its name is "DAKU-TEN") is unnecessary.
Not "ZU", "ZE", "ZO".
"HO", The top of right-hand side does not cross. It is not "MA."
And as my opinion,
I cannot distinguish "SO" from "N".
Note that angle of stroke. Right-hand stroke of "SO" moves top to bottom, the other, stroke of "N" moves bottom to top.
Although, Japanese people sometimes mistake.
Distinction of "SHI" and "TSU" is good!
Japanese people sometimes mistake too.
"NU" and "ME" are too wide.
"GA", Upper double point "DAKU-TEN" should be most in right-hand side.
from KYA,KYU,KYO to HYA,HYU,HYO
Right-hand side character is too large.
I am looking forward to completion of this font.
8 Mar 2004 — 6:06am
It's nice, Miguel, but there's too much 'stylistic' divergence between the Latin font and the Japanese fonts. The Latin font is squarish, geometric, clean, 'cool'. The Japanese fonts, as Kunihiko said, look handwritten, maybe a bit 'childish' too.
I'd try to make the Japanese fonts more squarish and geometric like the Latin, but that's a personal preference. They're still nice fonts in itself.
* * * * *
I mostly agree with Okano's post, of course.
And I'd like to add that:
- 'N' (h) is too short, make it taller;
- 'KA' (k) is not just the 'KA' (h) without the little stroke, the hiragana should be rounder/softer ;
- the descending strokes of 'KO', 'RO' and 'YO' (k) are too long;
- 'A', 'WA' (h), and 'TA' (k) are too big;
- 'YA' (both h and k) is too small;
- 'RU' and 'RO' (k) are too exaggerated.
(h=hiragana, k=katakana)
8 Mar 2004 — 9:34am
Miguel, I like it! (Although I can't read it.)
A couple of questions:
1) Where did you get the template - is it complete?
2) Is Kanji really not needed?
hhp
8 Mar 2004 — 10:04am
> 1) Where did you get the template - is it complete?
Well, you can get this kind of template in any Japanese 'learning' book. I think this template is complete, yes.
> 2) Is Kanji really not needed?
What do you mean?
I guess this face is intended for some sort of 'small-size-display' (like interface buttons or something), and in this case you can choose to work only with Kana. I'd say that when you have single words or pairs of words, you can use only Kana. But when you have a whole paragraph or sentence, you should use Kanji too.
Both Kana alphabets are phonetic, so you can write anything (that you'd write with Kanji) with them.
8 Mar 2004 — 10:20am
> when you have a whole paragraph or sentence, you should use Kanji too.
What happens if you don't?
hhp
8 Mar 2004 — 10:51am
Well, I guess it's just much harder to read something set in all-Kana (for many reasons).
8 Mar 2004 — 11:03am
But is it "socially unacceptable"? In what contexts?
--
BTW, Miguel, I'm realizing that maybe there's too much color variance. Although Japanese text with Kanji does have an incredible amount of color variation, I suspect the Kana sets need to be more uniform? If so, I'd try to compensate by making the strokes of the more complex letters thinner.
hhp
8 Mar 2004 — 11:38am
I'm not sure about it, really. Kunihiko certainly knows better.
In my understanding, and to use your own terms, it's 'socially unacceptable' to publish something all-Kana. But not only because of 'social' issues...
It's complicated. There are words, for example, that have proper Kanji spellings, but that most people spell/write using only Hiragana ('arigatou' is a common example, and Katakana is mostly used for foreign words).
10 Mar 2004 — 8:06am
Thanks for your feedback!
Hi Kunihiko,
Your critiques are great,
i will work on it now.
The handwriting style let me make the K
& H more understandable to make
differences between fonts, nice to know
from you, a japanese reader and
speaker, what kind of details can make
the difference to distinguish similar
characters.
Eduardo,
i am agree with the stylistic
divergence, bettwen the latin and
japanese fonts, that
11 Mar 2004 — 5:39am
wasabi mix zings gringo uvulas. fools quietly choked japan style.
11 Mar 2004 — 10:33am
> i am agree with the stylistic divergence,
> bettwen the latin and japanese fonts, that
12 Mar 2004 — 11:58pm
>In my understanding, and to use your own terms, it's 'socially unacceptable' to publish something all-Kana. But not only because of 'social' issues...
>It's complicated. There are words, for example, that have proper Kanji spellings, but that most people spell/write using only Hiragana ('arigatou' is a common example, and Katakana is mostly used for foreign words).
I think so too.
In the case of a packaging design, Sometime, a brand name and company name may be displayed in kana. A font of only kana is popular.
There are some fonts of only kana.
for example...
GrayGraphics(FreeFont 1byte)
http://www.orange.ne.jp/~den7/index.html
Almost all the fonts in this site consist of only kana.
It is used as a display font. I use often.
While, There is also a kana font which replaces full set Japanesefont's kana.
For example, Adobe's Ryo is.
Adobe Ryo (PDF)
http://www.adobe.co.jp/products/fontfolio/pdfs/ryo.pdf
This textsetting replaced Kozuka Mincho's kana with Ryo.
>One more thing.. any kerning text or
>Pangram to start to write in japanese?
Kana may adjoin all characters. So, a huge quantity of a kerning pair is needed. It is infinitely.
It is better to have been able to set without depending on kerning as much as possible. Therefore, in this case, it is better to equalize character width of this font.