Mixing Japanese and western characters is always tricky. Japanese fonts do include roman characters but they are never as well drawn as those of the classic western fonts, so what you tend to do is to mix fonts, trying to find a good match.
The most popular Japanese fonts for use in conjunction with Helvetica are probably Gothic MB101, Midashi Go MB31 and occasionally Chu Gothic BBB, all by the Morisawa font foundry. I would have to eliminate Chu Gothic BBB from the mix right away though as it is only available in one weight. This is true of Midashi Go MB31 too, but in this case it is the more useful bold weight as opposed to the regular, which I rarely use.
An alternative would be Kozuka Gothic which is included in Adobe’s Creative Suites. The roman characters don’t have much in common with Helvetica, but the Japanese characters are good. The same thing could be said of the AXIS font which is really nice overall, with a good balance between Japanese and roman characters – the roman ones again having little in common with Helvetica however.
In the end there is no right choice, it all comes down to taste, but I will follow up with a more detailed comparison in another post.
May 8th, 2009
Finding a Japanese match for Helvetica, pt. 1
April 20th, 2009
Frankie say relax
Yes, it’s ‘SAY’ not ‘SAYS’. Apparently ‘SAYS’ is the sign of a bootleg. The original was designed by Katharine Hamnet and later adopted by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and fans. Looking around the internet there seems to be lots of bootlegs, some of which even use the original ‘SAY’ wording, all spelling out the message in a variety of typefaces. My guess is that the original used Akzidenz Grotesk, just like other Hamnet t-shirts from the same time.
The original video for ‘Relax’ was banned by MTV, but can as expected be found on Youtube. It has a gay s&m club and a tiger – of course it’s great. The replacement video directed by Brian De Palma is pretty lackluster in comparison.
April 17th, 2009
Adam Curtis & Helvetica Condensed Black
Adam Curtis is an amazing documentary filmmaker. All of his films for the BBC are likely to change the way you think about a lot of things. Related to my last post on Akzidenz Grotesk Bold Condensed – the titles for Adam Curtis’ ‘The Trap’ from 1997 would look just as good on a Raf Simons t-shirt. This time it’s Helvetica Condensed Black.
April 15th, 2009
Akzidenz Grotesk Condensed Bold – voice of reason
Similar to Helvetica Condensed Bold, though less popular by far. Something about it and the Helvetica variant, attract a certain kind of designer and a certain kind of message – maybe Katharine Hamnett started it all with her ‘58% DON’T WANT PERSHING’ t-shirt. With the economy balancing on the brink of the abyss, Akzidenz Grotsek Bold and Helvetica Condensed Bold are the typefaces for our time.
