Journées d'étude "Écritures japonaises": review the lectures online

Japanese scripts: designing typefaces. History, origins and developments
日本の文字・書体を創作する
歴史、起源、発展

Scientific curatorship of the study days: André Baldinger, typographic artist, and Émilie Rigaud, graphic designer and historian of Japanese typography

"By proposing a dialogue between historians and designers, these two study days look at Japanese typographic typefaces and the context of their creation"
Émilie Rigaud, researcher and type designer

Typefaces using movable type became established in Japan at the end of the 19th century, supported by the prodigious speed of development of large daily newspapers. It took the place of xylography, a printing process in which text and images were engraved on a single wooden plate, then inked and printed. Then came photocomposition, replacing metal parts with glass plates, and thick ink with flashes of light. These successive technical changes, combined with the evolution of reading habits, had repercussions on the forms of Japanese signs.

What were the major developments in typographic technique in Japan? What links does typography have with calligraphy on the one hand, and images on the other? How are Japanese designers creating typefaces today, and how have foreign designers been able to appropriate the subject?

Playlist of lectures in French

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Playlist of lectures in Japanese

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Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Matsumura Daisuke - The characters of the Japanese city
Blanche Delaborde - Writing in manga : manuscript and typography
Ajioka Shintaro - The mixed composition kanji and kana, Typographic family for Japanese based on kana
Laïli Dor - Living type: how typography pushed calligraphy down the path of innovation
Émilie Rigaud - How to make 2111 signs from a square? Pixel fonts and the 1980s
André Baldinger - Japanese typeface design, between complexity and innovation

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Yuki Akari - The age of photocomposition. The work of Hashimoto Kazuo, font designer
Marianne Simon-Oikawa - Typography, calligraphy, painting: forms and issues of writing in Japanese visual poetry since the 1960s
Suzuki Hiromitsu - The peculiarities of kana made visible by movable type
Iwai Hisashi - The "forgotten" in Japanese text
Tsukada Tetsuya and the Shinsekai Type Study Group - The creation of "horizontally written" kanas