Takashi Funayama Since the introduction of metal type technology, the shape of characters used in Japan has undergone a transformation. In Japanese writing, characters were connected in a style called “renmen.” With the switch from letterpress printing to movable type printing in line with the style of Ming type Chinese characters, the renmen style disappeared. In this way, the introduction of technology also changed the specifications of language notation. During the Meiji Restoration, along with social changes, there were also major changes in the printing industry.
This project aims to reproduce the expression of ancient Japanese calligraphy in a modern production environment. While digital production environments have already enabled highly flexible layouts, this project aims to achieve reproducibility by utilizing numerical management.
In Arabic script, there is a feature that allows characters to be connected, but this does not exist in Japanese fonts. Referencing Arabic features, we classified the patterns of character connections and created character shapes that allow for natural connections. Current layout software does not allow for the free determination of connection positions. We conducted prototyping using features from other languages to achieve natural composition.In addition, we are creating scripts to reproduce the characteristic Japanese layout style known as “Chirashigaki(scattered writing)” Modern layout software is based on the principles of modern typography, so simply creating a font is insufficient to implement the layout. We are working on prototyping that enables randomness and organic character arrangement.