Welcome to issue 91!
In today’s issue, you will discover three font families that were influenced by the Japanese culture. One draws inspiration from the legacy of Japanese fashion designer Hanae Mori, another one is inspired by the seven samurai in Akira Kurosawa’s movie, and the last one is inspired by the playful Japanese visual culture. Some of these typefaces support both Latin and Japanese (or soon will) and therefore allow you to seamlessly blend different languages in your design projects. I hope that’s useful or at least, interesting to discover!

Enjoy! Noemi

Font Family of the Month

EVERY MONTH, FRESH FONTS MEMBERS RECEIVE A COMMERCIAL LICENSE FOR A NEW FONT FAMILY. AND THEY CAN USE THESE FONTS FOREVER, EVEN AFTER THEY CANCEL THEIR MEMBERSHIP.

The latest from Pizza Typefaces, Hop is a compact display typeface in seven weights, from Thin to Ultra. It includes two subfamilies: Hop Standard, with strong and straight letterforms, and Hop Rounded, with round contours. The two families are also available as a single variable font, with an axis that goes from one to the other (custom or ‘cstm’) and a second axis that controls font weight (weight or ‘wght’). There’s also a ‘fun’ stylistic set that will alternate uppercase and lowercase letters at random in your text, and a few other surprises to discover.

Become a member and get a license for a company size of one employee, that includes:

• The complete Hop superfamily (14 font styles + variable font)
• Use in personal and commercial projects
• Desktop use (on unlimited computers within the same company)
• Web use on one domain (unlimited traffic)
• Use in social media (but not in video content)

Cancel your membership anytime, use the fonts forever 😊✌️
Click here for more info about the Fresh Fonts membership.

Fresh Releases

In my previous issue, I was introducing Flavia Zimbardi’s project to publish a few typefaces designed in collaboration with fellow female type designers. The third and latest of these font releases, Hanae, was designed in collaboration with Ayaka Ito and is an evolution from the Old Style serif genre. It is currently available in two font styles (Hairline and Regular) but will eventually consist of a multiscript family — and a distinctive set of swashes is also expected. Note that if you license the typeface now, for €65, you will get the complete family at no extra cost upon its release, so that’s a pretty awesome deal.

Tongari is not new, but it’s hard to talk about fonts inspired by Japanese culture without mentioning it. This is because, first, Tongari was designed by Émilie Rigaud, a researcher focusing on the history of Japanese typography, who is therefore a reference in the field. Second, because Tongari is — in my humble opinion — a particularly beautiful and well-executed typeface. It consists of two subfamilies, Text and Display, with the Display version boasting a strong contrast and sharp terminals. Each subfamily comes in seven weights, with matching italics: “seven weights for seven samurai.”

Now in a completely different genre, Thanatos is the latest release from Matthijs Herzberg at Herzberg Design Co. Two years in the making, Thanatos looks like a revival, but it’s not — it was inspired by woodcuts and horror movies, for a rather strange combination. The typeface has sharp features and knife-like serifs, lending it an air of craftsmanship and solidity. But optical sizing is what really makes it versatile, with the typeface available in Display, Deck, and Text variants, each in eight weights with Roman and Italic. Oh, and ornaments!

New foundry alert! Based in Berlin, Stereo Typefaces is a new indie foundry co-founded by Mark Julien Hahn and Jan Robert Obst, with a focus on variable font design and research. Their starting catalogue includes four font families, and although I chose to put the spotlight on Protest Grotesk, the other ones are worth a look, too. As for Protest Grotesk, it’s a geometric workhorse with a few distinct features, such as deep inktraps. It comes in eight weights, from Thin to Black, with a two-axis variable font (weight and italic) and its equally cool monospaced sister family.

Walking in the footsteps of Lineto who recently introduced LineTomorrow, and Blaze Type who recently introduced The Box, Pangram Pangram just launched Off Type, a spin-off project for their off-beat and more experimental fonts. I’m definitely in favour of these projects, that help to move away from neutral sans-serifs to create space for more expressive fonts. As for Off Type’s starting catalogue, it includes nine typefaces — all of them designed by Valerio Monopoli — of which Rhapsody and Abalos are my favourites (both pictured above). Also, for a limited time, note that you can get the full foundry catalogue for only $14.

Experimental Release

Fat is a display sans available in a single, extremely thick weight. You’ll notice that its letters have a three dimensional aspect, which is most notable in the glyphs that have accents, where accents seem to be sitting in front of the letter, creating a sense of volume. Ligatures are cute as hell, and there is a wide set of arrows (including twisted arrows 😍), pictograms, and emojis. In addition, Fat supports Latin and Japanese (Kana, but not Kanji). This allows you to seamlessly blend different languages, “creating designs that transcend cultural barriers.”

Goods

There’s a restock of Japanese Layout Design at Counterprint, which you can pair with Japanese Color Matching for a nice Japanese themed book delivery!

To inaugurate the launch of Off Type, Pangram Pangram released a high-quality tee featuring some of the fonts from their new spin-off foundry.