View topic - Font Styles

by **AJBryant** » Fri 07.03.2009 7:41 pm

phreadom wrote:
AJBryant wrote:Personally, I like "kyôkasho" -- it's a font based on the one you typically see in textbooks in Japan. It's more cursive than the conventional Minchô, but also more standardized that a "penji" font.

I love it... but... Price: $1,108.00 USD

:'(

Would you believe... TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS?

http://www.dynalab.com/DynaShop/Japanes ... fault.aspx

by **phreadom** » Fri 07.03.2009 8:31 pm

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish I had a credit card right now!

I used this page http://www.nihongomemo.com/pctips/font.htm to get a similar font for free... but it says it's for "non-commercial personal use", so...

by **phreadom** » Fri 10.09.2009 9:28 pm

I just found a font that is absolutely crippling my brain... I've never seen anything else that had this effect.

: goura-sample.gif (13.54 KiB) Viewed 1474 times

Every time I look at it my brain shifts forcefully into English mode. I have to really consciously try to shift into seeing Japanese instead of English.

http://www.dwuk.jp/font/font-gou.html

I had to share.

by **Dustin** » Fri 10.09.2009 10:05 pm

That is one yucky font, my brain does the same thing ><

by **gabi in japan** » Sat 10.10.2009 12:16 am

All I can say is.... WOWOWOWOW!! That font is amazing!

by **Infidel** » Sat 10.10.2009 1:12 am

phreadom wrote:I just found a font that is absolutely crippling my brain... I've never seen anything else that had this effect.

goura-sample.gif

Every time I look at it my brain shifts forcefully into English mode. I have to really consciously try to shift into seeing Japanese instead of English.

http://www.dwuk.jp/font/font-gou.html

I had to share.

Wow, that is very much trying to mimic the feel of Illuminated letters. Since they are only used for the first letter of a word, it's usually not that difficult to figure out what it is even with highly ornate Illuminated letters.

by **phreadom** » Sat 10.10.2009 3:38 am

Infidel wrote:Wow, that is very much trying to mimic the feel of Illuminated letters. Since they are only used for the first letter of a word, it's usually not that difficult to figure out what it is even with highly ornate Illuminated letters.

I think a more accurate description would be Fraktur script.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur_%28script%29

I don't have a problem making out the letters in English (or the Latin/Roman alphabet specifically). But the point here is that I'm so accustomed to a lifetime of only ever seeing these letters specifically used for the Latin alphabet. And as they are generally slightly challenging to make out, my brain seems to have become accustomed to shifting into a specific mode where it tries to see the general shapes of the Latin alphabet when it sees this particular type of script.

But because there are actually no Latin letters here, but rather katakana... my brain doesn't find the patterns it expects to find, and has a little trouble switching to try to see katakana in the same way.

Even with some other unique and out of the ordinary katakana fonts, I can still fairly easily make them out.

: can_samp.gif (4.72 KiB) Viewed 1456 times

: ore_samp.gif (3.74 KiB) Viewed 1456 times

But with the Goura font (the Fraktur one), given the particular type of script used, my brain specifically strongly expects something it does not find.

For instance I could glance at a page like that of English (Latin/Roman) letters and much more readily make out several of them at a glance. Here I have to focus on each one and make it out one at a time.

by **tōkai devotee** » Sat 10.10.2009 5:19 am

That's bizarre! I was seeing maps of Australia, the USA and various US states until I finally worked out what those symbols were. It took around 3-4 minutes to work it out!
Once I worked out a few of them, the rest all fell into place. But perhaps if they were not in order, like if they were just random symbols, I'd have not much of a clue.

by **Harisenbon** » Mon 10.12.2009 9:21 am

I really like those katakana fonts ～

I wish that Japanese had more readily available interesting fonts for use in design and whatnot.
Since when you make a full font set you need some 2000 kanji, most font sets are pretty expensive, and tend to stay towards the conservative end of the spectrum in order to reach a wider market.

The kana-only fonts are always fun, but their use is so limited..

by **shin1ro** » Sun 11.01.2009 12:27 pm

I've been having very hard time to read this Fraktur!!! :twisted:

http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/fraktur.htm
By seeing this site, now I understand it's almost impossible to guess them (unless appears only at the first character in a paragraph in an English text) and I have to learn them almost like learning Cyrillic characters!!

Also, interesting to say that, pretty much different from people here in this thread, once I am used to read the Gaura font as Katakana in about one second, I read *perfect* katakana in the chart all the time without any effort and I never see any alphabets in it!! :idea: