KAZURAKI
Adobe's Type Engineering team in Japan has created a ground-breaking new typeface that is visually rich and free from the rigid design protocols that have constrained Japanese fonts for decades. Called Kazuraki, this new design serves as an inspiration and model for other CJK type designers and type foundries.
The Kazuraki typeface design was inspired by the calligraphy of 12th century artist and writer Fujiwara-no-Teika, who is considered to be one of the greatest poets in Japan's history. Inspired by Teika's calligraphy, Adobe Senior Designer Ryoko Nishizuka began creating a new typeface years ago.
Her work won the Silver Prize at the Morisawa's 2002 International Typeface Design Competition. Knowing that Japanese type foundries had a strong interest in creating calligraphic fonts, the team in Japan began to expand on Ryoko's prototype, leveraging OpenType's rich typographic capabilities.
Adobe's Type Engineering team in Japan has created a ground-breaking new typeface that is visually rich and free from the rigid design protocols that have constrained Japanese fonts for decades. Called Kazuraki, this new design serves as an inspiration and model for other CJK type designers and type foundries.
The Kazuraki typeface design was inspired by the calligraphy of 12th century artist and writer Fujiwara-no-Teika, who is considered to be one of the greatest poets in Japan's history. Inspired by Teika's calligraphy, Adobe Senior Designer Ryoko Nishizuka began creating a new typeface years ago.
Her work won the Silver Prize at the Morisawa's 2002 International Typeface Design Competition. Knowing that Japanese type foundries had a strong interest in creating calligraphic fonts, the team in Japan began to expand on Ryoko's prototype, leveraging OpenType's rich typographic capabilities.
Most Japanese fonts are monospaced, meaning that their glyphs are designed to fit within an imaginary box known as the em-square. On the other hand, Kazuraki is an example of genuinely proportional type that can faithfully represent the calligraphic quality of the typeface inspired by an ancient master. While Kazuraki is clearly not suitable for typesetting text in books, it is expected to be used by designers for what typographers refer to as "display uses." Display use include advertising copy, headlines, greeting cards, movie and book titles, restaurant menus, and so on.
Kazuraki is a special-purpose Japanese font that includes glyphs for the complete set of kana (hiragana and katakana) and punctuation, along with a limited number of glyphs for kanji (ideographs or Chinese characters) that have been deemed useful for use in Japanese greeting cards and Japanese restaurant menus.
Kazuraki is a special-purpose Japanese font that includes glyphs for the complete set of kana (hiragana and katakana) and punctuation, along with a limited number of glyphs for kanji (ideographs or Chinese characters) that have been deemed useful for use in Japanese greeting cards and Japanese restaurant menus.
