J A TYPOGRAPHY A A Gaijin’s Guide N E S E
Composed by William Probert
J A TYPOGRAPHY A N E S E
J A TYPOGRAPHY A A Gaijin’s Guide N E S E
Composed by William Probert
Published by What’s Good Publishing Co., an imprint of the I Don’t Have A Publishing Company, publishing company, on the 27th of May, 2015. First published in Australia, 2015. © William Probert (Fake Copyright) 2015 All rights reserved. This book, and its contents, are not for commerical publishing, all rights of images and text held within are for the author and illustrators of each respective piece. This is for personal use only, any misuse can and will be punishable by death, or trial by wand in the grand court of magister lord henry haaan. Designed by William Probert Illustrations by William Probert Typeset in 10pt, Mostra Nuova Light by Typekit Printed and bound in Australia by Blurb Inc., Australia
CONTENTS
9
Prologue
10
Welcome to Japanese Typography
24
Traditional typography in Japan
32
Contemporary Japanese Typography
45
Bibliography
Prologue
Japanese culture has always been the most encapturing and beautiful through my eyes. Since I was young I found a great fascination in this amazing place, and everything that was hidden within. The society, the culture, the history, the art, and everything in between, all of these things are what drew me towards being such an avid fan of Japan. This book is based on one small aspect which helped spark my curiosity for Japan, and that is it’s typography. The japanese systems of writing are one-of-a-kind and are some of the most aesthetically pleasing, and functional. I didn’t know too much about Japanese Typography speciically before I started compiling this book, but through the process I have learnt a great deal and have discovered a newfound love for it. This book will briely cover a myriad of topics relating to Japanese Typography and it’s applications. I hope in reading this book you will not only take in the information which I have compiled here, but also get an understanding as to why I believe Japanese Typography is so beautiful and unique.
William Probert
C H AO PN TE E R
Welcome to Japanese Typography
Kanji and the Two Kana
Kanji
Katakana
Hiragana
Japanese Typography consists of some of the most beautiful writing systems in existence. The roots of these writing systems began way back around 500 AD, with the introduction of the chinese Kanji symbols into Japanese written communication Today, Japan has 3 seperate writing systems of which to communicate with, these being Kanji and the two Kanas Hiragana and Katakana. To understand Japanese Typography, first one must understand it’s origins.
11
Welcome to Japanese Typography
In The Beginning... Chinese characters, called kanji in Japanese, are also heavily used in the Japanese writing. Most of the words in the Japanese written language are written in kanji (nouns, verbs, adjectives). There exists over 40,000 kanji where about 2,000 represent over 95% of characters actually used in written text. There are no spaces in Japanese so kanji is necessary in distinguishing between separate words within a sentence. Kanji is also useful for discriminating between homophones, which occurs quite often given the limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese. The Japanese had no writing system prior to the introduction of the Chinese one, which was originally used by Chinese people who lived in Japan during the early Christian era. Later, the educated Japanese used it to write the Chinese language. The earliest known examples of Japanese writing, dating back to the 5th and 6th Centuries A.D., are proper names inscribed with Chinese characters on a mirror and a sword. But by the 8th and 9th Centuries A.D., Chinese characters began to be used to represent the Japanese language. Since the two languages are so different in their syntax and phonology, Chinese loanwords and characters began to be “Japaniied� for more convenient use. The implementation of Chinese characters as a crux to the Japanese written language, was incredibly rough and full of laws. It made written communiaction incredibly vague and dificult, so it was apparent early on that changes would have to be made.
12
ABOVE: Ancient Shodo, from a time where Kanji was predominantly based in the Chinese language
13
ABOVE: Katakana being utilised for non-traditional signage, katakana is often utilised for this kind of application
14
Welcome to Japanese Typography
Introduction of the Kana Due to the issues that having Kanji as the sole means of written communication endured, the introduction of a more cohesive writing system was needed. Kanji had worked to great affect for it’s time, and would forever be a large part in Japanese written communication, but it was missing the aspects which would make the Japanese written language synonymous with the verbal. This is why the kana’s had to be introduced. Hiragana, the irst of the Japanese kana to be created, developed from man’yōgana, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, was a practice which started in the 5th century. The oldest example of Man’yōgana is Inariyama Sword which is an iron sword excavated at the Inariyama Kofun in 1968. This sword is thought to be made in year A.D. 471. The forms of the hiragana originate from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy. The igure on the left shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the regular script form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana. Note also that the cursive script forms are not strictly conined to those in the illustration. Hiragana inds it’s main use in communicating traditional Japanese terms and concepts, and also sometimes is used to represent Kanji symbols. Unlike Kanji, where each symbol represents a word or concept, Hiragana is a syllabary of different sounds represented by just over 40 characters. This draws similarities to the english alphabet. In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for those Japanese language words and grammatical inlections which kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary usage is quite similar to italics in English; speciically, it is used for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo); for emphasis; to represent onomatopoeia; for technical and scientiic terms; and for names of plants, animals, minerals, and often Japanese companies.
15
O
E
U
I
A
ABOVE: The vowels of the Hiragana kana. As with the English alphabet, these 5 sounds are found in any Japanese word. Katakana was developed in the 9th century (during the early Heian period) by Buddhist monks by taking parts of man’yōgana characters as a form of shorthand, hence this kana is so-called kata. The two kana’s are two very different syllabrys, inding their similarities in the sounds represented and the amount of characters within them. Aside from this though they are starkly different, as illustrated previously, they both are used to represent different words and concepts in Japanese society, and when it comes to their aesthetic appeal they have completely different stylings. Hiragana appears to have more similarities to Kanji, this may be because Hiragana was initially based on the Kanji characters. Whereas Katakana is much more rigid, and angular, this may be due to it’s origins as a shorthand form used by old buddhist monks. Between kanji and the two kana, it can be quite dificult from a western point of view to build a foundation understanding of even the fundamentals of Japanese typography. To create a typeface that has full access to all Japanese characters can be qute a process, with there being somewhere between 5000-7000 kanji characters. If endurance is a measure, this kind of typeface design can be seen as a task made for the adept.
“Katakana is much more rigid, and angular, this may be due to it’s origins as a shorthand form used by old buddhist monks.”
16
In comparing to western typography, Japanese typography is often limited due to the point illustrated above, but as will be displayed later in the book, there are plenty of designers and artist that are up to the task of creating these extremely dificult typefaces. When it comes to book design there is often also a huge challenge that lies ahead, due to the necessity of ten point font sizes, japanese characters can be very dificult to be legible under western guidelines. This is why the japanese don’t follow these fundamental rules, and have built there own guidelines. More on the inluence of this, and the horizontal/vertical orientation challenge follows.
ABOVE: Hiragana text embossed on a steel sign, the age of the artifact goes to show how long Hiragana has been in prominent use in Japan
17
Welcome to Japanese Typography
Vertical or Horizontal? “Vertical or horizontal?” — when setting a piece of text in Japanese, this is a question that Japanese designers constantly need to ask themselves. Being able to use both vertical and horizontal writing orientations is something so normal for us native Japanese speakers that most of us won’t even stop to wonder why this is possible, or even when and how it was irst introduced. In general, these two writing orientations have a clear usage: vertical for something “Japanese”, “traditional”, “novels and other humanistic writings”; horizontal for “contemporary”, “business documents”, “scientiic & foreign language related writings” and so on. When a main text is set horizontally, the binding is on the left-hand side, and pages progress to the right, like books in Latin scripts. Traditional books in vertical setting are the other way around, with the binding at the right hand side, and pages progressing to the left. So when you handle a Japanese book, don’t confuse the front with the back! Where the eficient use of space is important — namely newspapers and magazines — both orientations are often combined. Although it may appear a bit chaotic, or even random to foreign eyes, these two directions are usually used in a systematic way as a means to indicate different text elements on a page. For instance, a main text is often set in a vertical setting, but headings and captions may be set in a horizontal setting. In a way, it’s comparable to “typographic variants” which are found in Latin typography — in Latin script text one may use bold, italic, or a different font to differentiate things such as pull quotes from the main text, whereas in Japanese we can do this by using a different orientation. Publications which accommodate non-linear or complex text (as opposed to linear text, such as novels) seem to beneit in particular from having these two orientations, which allow the layout to be highly lexible, and also to create strong visual impact. The extreme cases of “space-eficiency-oriented typography” are informational-heavy pieces of text, such as diagrams and signage — also exploiting the two directional orientations. The Tokyo
18
Horizontal Orientation
Vertical Orientation
Metro map (Fig 10) is a good example of this — as you can see, both orientations are used accordingly, so that everything its best within the limited space. It’s true that in many cases they look quite chaotic and sometimes even aesthetically questionable to eyes that are used to “orderly” design. But it’s easy to appreciate the visual impact and energy they create — they remind you that effective, appealing informational design does not always have to look “neat and tidy”. It’s quite dificult working with both horizontal and vertical type, this much is true, but if one is able to adapt a good understanding of how to operate with these different ways of formatting text, brilliant and amazing results can be achieved. The diversity in text orientation has been used in the past in really effective ways to create beautiful design pieces that are timeless. Horizontal text came into Japanese in the Meiji era, when the Japanese began to print Western language dictionaries. Initially they printed the dictionaries in a mixture of horizontal Western and vertical Japanese text, which meant readers had to rotate the book ninety degrees to read the Western text. Because this was unwieldy, the idea of yokogaki came to be accepted. One of the irst publications to partially use yokogaki was a German to Japanese dictionary published in 1885 (Meiji 18). At the beginning of the change to horizontal alignment in Meiji era Japan, there was a short-lived form called migi yokogak, in contrast to hidari yokogaki, the current standard. This resembled the right-to-left horizontal writing style of languages such as Arabic with line breaks on the left. It was probably based on the traditional single-row right-to-left writing. This form was never widely used except for pre-WWII oficial documents (like banknotes), and has not survived outside of some temple name signs.
19
Welcome to Japanese Typography
Origins of Modern Printing Printing origins in Japan, similarly to the beginnings of their written communication, was brought over from China. Woodblock-printed books from Chinese Buddhist temples were seen in Japan as early as the eighth century. In 764 the Empress Kōken commissioned one million small wooden pagodas, each containing a small woodblock scroll printed with a Buddhist text (Hyakumanto Darani). These were distributed to temples around the country as thanksgiving for the suppression of the Emi Rebellion of 764.[1] These are the earliest examples of woodblock printing known, or documented, from Japan. By the eleventh century, Buddhist temples in Japan produced printed books of sutras, mandalas, and other Buddhist texts and images. For centuries, printing was mainly restricted to the Buddhist sphere, as it was too expensive for mass production, and did not have a receptive, literate public as a market. However, an important set of fans of the late Heian period (12th century), containing painted images and Buddhist sutras, reveal from loss of paint that the underdrawing for the paintings was printed from blocks.[2] Not until 1590 was the irst secular book printed in Japan. This was the Setsuyō-shū, a two-volume Chinese-Japanese dictionary. Though the Jesuits operated a movable type printing press in Nagasaki from 1590,[3] printing equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s army from Korea in 1593 had far greater inluence on the development of the medium. Four years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even before becoming shogun, effected the creation of the irst native moveable type, using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. He oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which were used to print a number of political and historical texts. As shogun, Ieyasu promoted literacy and learning, contributing to the emergence of an educated urban public. The medium quickly gained popularity among artists, and was used to produce small, cheap, art prints as well as books. The great pioneers in applying this method to the creation of art books, and in preceding mass production for general consumption, were Honami Kōetsu and Suminokura Soan. At their studio in Saga, the pair created a number of woodblocks of the Japanese classics,
20
ABOVE: The blocks above are used in the traditional process of woodblock printing in Japan.
both text and images, essentially converting handscrolls to printed books, and reproducing them for wider consumption. These books, now known as Kōetsu Books, Suminokura Books, or Saga Books, are considered the irst and inest printed reproductions of many of these classic tales; the Saga Book of the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari), printed in 1608, is especially renowned. Woodblock printing, though more tedious and expensive than later methods, was far less so than the traditional method of writing out each copy of a book by hand; thus, Japan began to see something of literary mass production. While the Saga Books were printed on expensive fancy paper, and used various embellishments, being printed speciically for a small circle of literary connoisseurs, other printers in Kyoto quickly adapted the technique to producing cheaper books in large numbers, for more general consumption. The wood block is carefully prepared as a relief pattern, which means the areas to show ‘white’ are cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in ‘black’ at the original surface level. The block was cut along the grain of the wood. It is necessary only to ink the block and bring it into irm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. The content would of course print “in reverse” or mirror-image, a further complication when text was involved. The art of carving the woodcut is technically known as xylography, though the term is rarely used in English In addition, jia xie is a method for dyeing textiles (usually silk) using wood blocks invented in the 5th-6th centuries in China. An upper and a lower block is made, with carved out compartments opening to the back, itted with plugs. The cloth, usually folded a number of times, is inserted and clamped between the two blocks. By unplugging the different compartments and illing them with dyes of different colours, a multi-coloured pattern can be printed over quite a large area of folded cloth. The method is not strictly printing however, as the pattern is not caused by pressure against the block.
21
Welcome to Japanese Typography
The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, advice manuals, kibyōshi (satirical novels), sharebon (books on urban culture), art books, and play scripts for the jōruri (puppet) theatre. Often, within a certain genre, such as the jōruri theatre scripts, a particular style of writing became standard for that genre. For example, one person’s personal calligraphic style was adopted as the standard style for printing plays. Many publishing houses arose and grew, publishing both books and individual prints. One of the most famous and successful was called Tsuta-ya. A publisher’s ownership of the physical woodblocks used to print a given text or image constituted the closest equivalent to a concept of “copyright” that existed at this time. Publishers or individuals could buy woodblocks from one another, and thus take over the production of certain texts, but beyond the protective ownership of a given set of blocks (and thus a very particular representation of a given subject), there was no legal conception of the ownership of ideas. Plays were adopted by competing theatres, and either reproduced wholesale, or individual plot elements or characters might be adapted; this activity was considered legitimate and routine, at the time. Woodblock printing continued after the decline of ukiyo-e, and introduction of movable type and other technologies, as a method and medium for printing texts as well as for producing art, both within traditional modes such as ukiyo-e and in a variety of more radical or Western forms that might be construed as modern art. Institutes such as the “Adachi Institute of Woodcut Prints” and “Takezasado” continue to produce Ukiyo-e prints with the same materials and methods as used in the past. Despite these techniques that Japan used for quite some time, in the modern day their printing techniques are very similar, if not the same as you see around the world. With the addition of printing infrastructure that is capable of outlaying the vertical type style. Woodcut prints and woodcut printers still exist within Japan today, even with it’s popularity dissipating, and is more utilised now to create limited pieces, art or design which an designers wishes to give a traditional appearance and aesthetic. Woodblock printing has even been taken up by prominent designers in the West, and the results have been astounding. This just goes to show how much the traditional techniques can be timeless, and with the appropriate application, beautiful and modern creations can still be made.
22
ABOVE: Although not text, probably one of the most famous examples of the woodblock printing process is the “Great Wave”.
23
C H AT PW TO E R
Traditional Typography in Japan
Edomoji Kentairyu
Japanese Typography is key to design in Japan, as is Typography in general to design anywhere else in the world. In modern Japan, the typography is evidently used in a variety of creative applications and methods. From it’s first inception, Japanese type has come a long way since it’s woodblock printing practise, and has been innovated and revitalised time, and time again.
25
Traditional Typography in Japan
The different stylings of type In general, there are roughly 5 different stypeface classiications in japanese typography which exist. These are mincho, gothic, maru, kaku, and P. Each one of these classiications can be utilised and implemented in various ways, to achieve which ever design goal you are looking to achieve. Knowing what each of these type classiications are, and how to utilise them effectively, is essential for anyone who is trying to get into design in Japan.
MINCHO “Mincho” is the most common sufix and style you’ll see in Japanese typography. Have you ever heard of Ming or the Ming Dynasty? That’s right, it’s Chinese. The Japanese alphabet is based on the Chinese character set. The “Min” in “Mincho” stands for “Ming”. “Cho” stands for dynasty. As it’s based off of an ancient writing method, the style is equally historic. If all of this is too much to remember, just think of “mincho” as the western version of “serif” and you’ll be good. Visually, the “Mincho” style of typography is comprised of contrasting vertical and horizontal strokes. You’ll also notice that mincho typefaces often have, what appears to be, a small triangle nestled into the stroke. Most often it can be found on the top or top-right edge of the stroke. This is called “uroko”. It represents the “pause” in the brush stroke as the writer prepares to continue the stroke or complete it.
GOTHIC “Gothic” is the second-most common. Gothic is synonymous with the english type classiication, sansserif. These typefaces often have consistent stroke-weights as well as more simplistic strokes. Often, this style of typeface is used in digital application as well as designs that embody modernity.
26
Traditional Typography in Japan
MARU Maru is most often combined with a “gothic” or sans-serif style of typography. “Maru” literally means circle or round. It’s because of this that most “maru” typefaces have, you guessed it, rounded corners. Maru is great for quick readability and less-imposing typographic applications.
KAKU Kaku literally means “corner”. It’s not quite as intuitive as “maru” but it represents the opposite style: sharp and pointed corners. If a typeface isn’t created with “maru” and “kaku” versions, you’ll most often ind that the standard “gothic” style incorporates the “kaku” qualities.
P What the heck is “P”? Good question. “P” is often attached to the names of a typeface that you’ve found and it stands for “proportional”—yes, English. It means and implies that each individual character has been condensed independently for the sake of readability. In other words, tighter letter-spacing. It’s the opposite of mono-spacing These type classiications are the vague "genres" of japanese type, yet when it coems to contemporary Japanese typography there have been many abstract appropriations of these styles and also many which reject these classiications entirely. These are good to know though, because it gives a designer the basic framework of what type classiications there are in Japan and they can decide how they use that knowledge when making their own creative executions. Whether that be by completely rejecting them altogether, or if it be by following them religously when making design choices.
G O T H I C
M I N C H O
K A K U
P
M A R U
Traditional Typography in Japan
Edomoji Edomoji are Japanese lettering styles, which were invented for advertising in the Edo period. The main styles of Edomoji include Kanteiryū, Yosemoji, Kagomoji, Higemoji, Chōchinmoji and Kakuji.
Kanteiryu This style is used for publicity and programmes for arts like kabuki and rakugo. Invented by Okazakiya Kanroku. the name derives from Okazaki's nickname, kantei.
Yosemoji The name yosemoji literally means “letters for yose (Japanese theater)”. A combination of kanteiryū and chōchinmoji, it was used for posters and lyers.
Kagomoji This name literally means “cage letters”. The characters are thick and square in shape. It is usually used in inverted form or sometimes as an outline.
Higemoji These characters have little “whiskers” on them. This style is used for kakigōri and ramune signs as well as being a common style for sake labels.
Summoji Style of lettering used for sumo wrestling advertisements and programmes.
28
ABOVE: An example of Edomoji being used for traditional chochin (chochinmoji), lanterns prominently used in storefronts in Japan.
Chochinmoji These characters are the ones used on chĹ?chin (hanging paper lanterns), such as the ones commonly seen outside a yakitori stand in Japan.
Kakuji This very heavy, rectangular style is used for making seals.
29
ABOVE: An image of an artist creating shodo, the traditional japanese art of calligraphy.
30
Traditional Typography in Japan
Shodo Japanese calligraphy (Shodo) has it’s origins in the Chinese writing system. Chinese characters were irst appearing in Japan on various items brought from China starting with the beginning of the 1st century C.E. At that point, the Chinese writing system was fully matured and developed. There were approximately 50 000 kanji in circulation, 5 major styles of calligraphy and numerous sub-styles. Since Japanese linguistics and grammar are quite different from Chinese, the necessity of itting a writing system to a completely new language raised a serious practical problem. Nonetheless, it has led to creating unique calligraphy styles that are exclusively used in Japan, such as Kana. Shodo was heavily inluenced by Chinese practise for a signiicant amount of time, and only after this long period of Japanese adaptation of Chinese characters did they begin to create an identity of their own calligraphy. Buddhist monks were some of the irst practitioners of what could be identiied as Japanese calligraphy in the 10th century, with the introduction of Hiragana being implemented into the Shodo designs. Hiragana has replaced troublesome manyougana (A combination of kanji with both semantic and non-semantic meaning) with much simpler and fewer forms, although both writing systems are still used (together) in the highly artistic art of Japanese calligraphy, namely kana.
31
C HT AH PR T E E E R
Contemporary Japanese Typography
An Example of Contemporary Japanese Type
From it’s beginnings, until the modern day, the impacts of typography are well recorded and evident. In relation to contemporary Japanese Typography and Design, Japanese designers have come a long way. The best way to illustrate this is by taking a look at some the best designers of the last twentty years in Japan, and seeing how they have approached their use of typography and created effective and succesfuly creative choices relating to typography.
33
Contemporary Japanese Typography
New Gothic Anybody that has any exposure to design has heard about Helvetica. The king of typefaces in some people’s minds, acclaimed for it’s simplicity, grandure and all the other adjectives that can be attached to a minimalistic design. Utilised through hunderds, if not thousands of commercial brandings and marketing campaigns, Helvetica is one of the most accomplished typefaces in history. So it is no surprise that in Japan they have their own version of Helvetica which has seen just as much acclaim and use throughout Japan.
34
ABOVE: The “New Gothic” typeface, as you can see, it draws many similarities to Helvetica in it’s aesthetic appeal
35
ABOVE: One of the artists involved in the “Noramoji� project, and a store owner whose store they based a typeface from
36
Contemporary Japanese Typography
Noramoji Noramoji is a project being run by three typographers in Japan. Basically the aim of the projetc for these guys is to travel the country, and ind unique Japanese storefronts which have amazing typography choices in their signs, and digitally create a typeface based of of these discoveries. The results of the project have been astounding, with a wide range of typefaces being created all based off old signs that storefront owners just whipped up for their fruit store, or pachinko parlour. For more information on this project, search them up in google and watch their video, it’s astounding design work.
37
Contemporary Japanese Typography
Kiyoshi Awazu Japanese graphic designer Kiyoshi Awazu (1929 – 2009), known for his contributions to poster and urban design, was consistently considered among the upper echelon of Japanese graphic designers throughout his career, which began in the years following World War II.
38
ABOVE: One of Awazu’s prominent pieces of typography work, the “Hiragana Stack” shows the various froms of Hiragana in a beautiful way.
39
ABOVE: One of the typographic pieces of graphic designer, Shun Sasaki.
40
Contemporary Japanese Typography
Shun Sasaki Graphic designer Shun Sasaki has a way with words. He creates eye-popping, highly styled typographic ads for clients that range from beauty salons and bookshops to hip hop groups. But some of my favorite work are his colorful creations that feature very few words or, in some cases, no words at all.
41
Contemporary Japanese Typography
Masahiko Kozuka Masahiko Kozuka began making type in 1952. At that time, he had started working at the Mainichi newspaper, one of the leading nationwide daily newspapers in Japan, where he made hot metal text and headline typefaces. In the 1960s, phototypesetters became widely available and were used especially in commercial printing. This increased the need for display typefaces. He designed some experimental and display, but his basic idea always was to create “type not just to be seen, but to be composed and read.� In the 1970s, in the transition from hot metal to digital type, he redesigned many fonts of Mainichi’s newspaper faces. From 1984, as type design director for Morisawa & Company, he supervised many type development projects such as the popular ShinGo typeface family.
42
ABOVE: A sample of characters from one of the typefaces Masahiko Kozuka designed, titled “Kozuka Gothic�.
43
Bibliography http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/writing.html http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/reports/japanese.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodblock_printing_in_Japan http://www.humblebunny.com/understanding-japanese-typography/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edomoji http://www.beyondcalligraphy.com/japanese_calligraphy_part_4.html http://www.tofugu.com/2012/09/26/japans-helvetica/ http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2013/12/02/noramoji-fonts-made-out-of-retro-japanesestorefronts/ http://butdoesitloat.com/The-creative-exuberance-of-the-mind-liberated-from-its-ostensibly http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2014/05/29/eye-popping-graphic-design-by-shun-sasaki/