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These are quite nice looking. Is it correct to say that making them in this fashion with a neat grid and precise measurements is sort of contrary to how Kanji a

These are quite nice looking. Is it correct to say that making them in this fashion with a neat grid and precise measurements is sort of contrary to how Kanji are normally written (with sort of an artistic attention to stroke order and direction)?

innocenat 7y ago
While I can read all of the signs in the article, I think I wouldn't be able to if I don't know the context. Some characters are really distorted, and in many case character boundary are blurred.
- fogetti 7y ago
  I agree. This is a terrible font face. I see the artistic value of it, but using it as any kind of guidance is a failure. Especially in stations like Shimokitazawa where the platforms are extremely narrow in some cases. This would just be another hindrance to find my way around in an inherently complex public transport system.
  - aikinai 7y ago
    How would this be a hindrance? If you read it, it helps. If you don’t read it, it’s not going to hinder anything.
    - fogetti 7y ago
      If you have to spend a minute or more to read something which might or might not be useful, that's an annoyance, I would even say disturbance. Takes precious time to find the right information in a place where minutes or even seconds matter. If you never lived in Tokyo then you have no clue what I am talking about. If you did, you would exactly know what I am talking about.
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        Many thousands of people living in Tokyo right now disagree with your middlebrow Internet contrarianism. This isn't an art protect, it's an actual part of the subway system that has been in place for a long time, providing ad hoc guidance in the face of sudden alterations due to construction in progress. Have their been complaints about how it has harmed anyone's ability to navigate?
        fogetti 7y ago
        I can only see two people here who disagrees with me. And many thousands of people agrees with me in Tokyo. Ha! Did you see what i did there? ;)
      - aikinai 7y ago
        I've lived in Tokyo for many years and have no idea what you're talking about. The characters are very peculiar but completely legible at a glance, and the maps are incredibly informative.
        fogetti 7y ago
        So there is a illegible distorted text which seeks attention to occupy your view and you don't know what I am talking about? Have you heard of navigation? Also the definition of distorted: "giving a misleading or false account or impression; misrepresented." It seems I have to explain it to you then.
        fogetti 7y ago
        And I was not even the one who said that it's distorted in the first place. It was the parent comment. Shall I explain that also to you?
- 0xfaded 7y ago
  I use 12x6 bitmap font with double width CJK characters. Many kanji are simply balls of pixels with fuzzy edges. I remember when I was learning I did something to cause these characters to appear on screen in front of a Japanese friend (maybe cat'd an anki dump or something), and being absolutely blown away that he had zero trouble reading them.
mrob 7y ago
It's a sans-serif typeface (called "gothic" typeface in Japanese), which is commonly used for signs, and stroke order/direction isn't so visible without serifs. But the design still implies stroke order in some cases, e.g. with round corners suggesting a single stroke, and sharp corners suggesting two strokes. Some of the signs are written in "round gothic" style where this distinction is dropped, but round gothic is still a normal style. The strong alignment of the strokes to a grid is somewhat unusual, and the article explains how it's a result of the production technique. It's a good example of technical limitations fostering creativity. It reminds me of pixel art, where limited resolution forced development of new techniques that ended up being aesthetically appealing in their own right. The need to make clearly legible signs with limited equipment in a busy train station produced a distinctive style that wouldn't have happened without these constraints.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
kijin 7y ago
Kanji come in many forms, just as the Latin script has serif, sans-serif, slab serif, and various handwritten forms. Stroke order and direction are accentuated the most when Kanji is written with a brush on paper, which many computer fonts try to mimic. But the strokes can be made much less prominent when the letters are carved into stone or wood. You can even use a brush to flow all the strokes from several letters together into a long, virtually illegible squiggle [1]. Modern instruments like fountain pens produce different results, and pencils are still more different. There are different customs and standards of penmanship for each writing instrument. The duct-tape typeface looks rather similar to seal script [2], an ancient style that is still commonly mimicked when, obviously, people carve seals (inkan). [1] For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xu [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script
- innocenat 7y ago
  It's not similar to seal script at all. A lot of seal scripts are unintelligible to me, even when I know what Kanji it represent. This is mostly legiable.
  - kijin 7y ago
    I'm talking about the style of the strokes, not the structure of specific letters. The example shown on Wikipedia is thousands of years old, of course the letters looked different then.

innocenat 7y ago

While I can read all of the signs in the article, I think I wouldn't be able to if I don't know the context. Some characters are really distorted, and in many case character boundary are blurred.

fogetti 7y ago
I agree. This is a terrible font face. I see the artistic value of it, but using it as any kind of guidance is a failure. Especially in stations like Shimokitazawa where the platforms are extremely narrow in some cases. This would just be another hindrance to find my way around in an inherently complex public transport system.
- aikinai 7y ago
  How would this be a hindrance? If you read it, it helps. If you don’t read it, it’s not going to hinder anything.
  - fogetti 7y ago
    If you have to spend a minute or more to read something which might or might not be useful, that's an annoyance, I would even say disturbance. Takes precious time to find the right information in a place where minutes or even seconds matter. If you never lived in Tokyo then you have no clue what I am talking about. If you did, you would exactly know what I am talking about.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      Many thousands of people living in Tokyo right now disagree with your middlebrow Internet contrarianism. This isn't an art protect, it's an actual part of the subway system that has been in place for a long time, providing ad hoc guidance in the face of sudden alterations due to construction in progress. Have their been complaints about how it has harmed anyone's ability to navigate?
      - fogetti 7y ago
        I can only see two people here who disagrees with me. And many thousands of people agrees with me in Tokyo. Ha! Did you see what i did there? ;)
    - aikinai 7y ago
      I've lived in Tokyo for many years and have no idea what you're talking about. The characters are very peculiar but completely legible at a glance, and the maps are incredibly informative.
      - fogetti 7y ago
        So there is a illegible distorted text which seeks attention to occupy your view and you don't know what I am talking about? Have you heard of navigation? Also the definition of distorted: "giving a misleading or false account or impression; misrepresented." It seems I have to explain it to you then.
      - fogetti 7y ago
        And I was not even the one who said that it's distorted in the first place. It was the parent comment. Shall I explain that also to you?
0xfaded 7y ago
I use 12x6 bitmap font with double width CJK characters. Many kanji are simply balls of pixels with fuzzy edges. I remember when I was learning I did something to cause these characters to appear on screen in front of a Japanese friend (maybe cat'd an anki dump or something), and being absolutely blown away that he had zero trouble reading them.

mrob 7y ago

It's a sans-serif typeface (called "gothic" typeface in Japanese), which is commonly used for signs, and stroke order/direction isn't so visible without serifs. But the design still implies stroke order in some cases, e.g. with round corners suggesting a single stroke, and sharp corners suggesting two strokes. Some of the signs are written in "round gothic" style where this distinction is dropped, but round gothic is still a normal style. The strong alignment of the strokes to a grid is somewhat unusual, and the article explains how it's a result of the production technique. It's a good example of technical limitations fostering creativity. It reminds me of pixel art, where limited resolution forced development of new techniques that ended up being aesthetically appealing in their own right. The need to make clearly legible signs with limited equipment in a busy train station produced a distinctive style that wouldn't have happened without these constraints.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

kijin 7y ago

Kanji come in many forms, just as the Latin script has serif, sans-serif, slab serif, and various handwritten forms. Stroke order and direction are accentuated the most when Kanji is written with a brush on paper, which many computer fonts try to mimic. But the strokes can be made much less prominent when the letters are carved into stone or wood. You can even use a brush to flow all the strokes from several letters together into a long, virtually illegible squiggle [1]. Modern instruments like fountain pens produce different results, and pencils are still more different. There are different customs and standards of penmanship for each writing instrument. The duct-tape typeface looks rather similar to seal script [2], an ancient style that is still commonly mimicked when, obviously, people carve seals (inkan). [1] For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Xu [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script

innocenat 7y ago
It's not similar to seal script at all. A lot of seal scripts are unintelligible to me, even when I know what Kanji it represent. This is mostly legiable.
- kijin 7y ago
  I'm talking about the style of the strokes, not the structure of specific letters. The example shown on Wikipedia is thousands of years old, of course the letters looked different then.