Graphic Design / Typography in Japanese Culture – Standards, Dos & Don’ts ??

7 comments

1. Use *all* the colors and *all* the fonts. On the web, paste text in as an image.

2. Don’t arbitrarily break lines just to have a good rag. There are places where it’s okay to break a line and places where it’s less desirable because it impedes comprehension and feels wrong.

   Just as in English, it’s best to avoid widows and orphans. My experience is that Japanese typography on the whole can look quite garish compared to what’s normal in English. People are far more tolerant of what I would call *childish* *typography*.

   *Edited to add:*
   *One nice thing about Japanese, is that you can compose text right to left (in addition to left to right), or vertically from top to bottom. When to do that is a question of it “feeling” right. Copy in books is typically vertical and right to left, but posters, menus, and brochures are typically left to right.*

   ​

   Also, in English, it’s poor practice to arbitrarily add apostrophes to words ending in “s”. An apostrophe is not a warning that an “s” is coming. (See *”want’s”* above.)

3. You need to add a 6-color rainbow outline to everything! That’s the only rule apparently.

4. One really important thing would be to use a Japanese fond as opposed to a Chinese, simplified Chinese or Korean font. There is some characters that are not exactly written the same way or simplified the same way between them all, but they share the same unicode character.

   here are some links that have visual examples

   [https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/64590/why-are-japanese-fonts-different-to-chinese](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/64590/why-are-japanese-fonts-different-to-chinese)

   [http://www.growingwiththeweb.com/images/2014/03/09/cjk-characters.png](http://www.growingwiththeweb.com/images/2014/03/09/cjk-characters.png)

5. Assuming you know little about Japanese text and are being handed the copy.

   First, until you learn nuances, all Japanese text is monospaced. Don’t try to kern any of it until you know a lot more about the topic.

   Second, get familiar with hiragana, katakana, and kanji, and what their roles are. As another said, Japanese draw some kanji different from their Chinese historical roots, so don’t just use any typeface without paying attention. Assume the viewer’s attention will start at the upper right of a page or layout and work their way into a layout down and to the left. Not like English where the assumption is from the upper left.

   Third: there’s not much middle ground. Either they prefer an ascetic spare minimum amount of text to invoke a feeling, or they want a veritable wall of information to be pored over in detail. Ascetic one-liners float over imagery like a haiku. Walls of data fill the margins in multiple sizes of the same typeface, with a bolder typeface here and there to break up the chunks. Ascetism for illustrations have childlike characters and mascots, or high-concept photos that fade at the edges. Walls of text, if they use imagery, use casino-style dense bursts of color or patterns or other space-filling non-interpretive embellishments.

   Find a Japanese bookseller and get a stack of home magazines, cooking books, technical manuals, art and travel stuff, and so on.

6. To clarify, I’m not a designer, but I’ll give you my take anyhow. I’ve been in Japan since 2006, and I’ve seen every bad design possibility you can imagine.

   When I make something, I stick with the basic principles of design, even if the Japanese often don’t. I always like the ones from Robin Williams’ excellent book on the subject of design: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. https://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-4th/dp/0133966151

   When it comes to using Japanese typography, do as the other comment suggested and make certain you are using JAPANESE fonts, and not Chinese or Korean. Some people will tell you they are the same, or that it doesn’t matter—quite simply, they are wrong.

   Yes, there are Japanese italic and bold typefaces. They are used less frequently unless simply seeking an overall “different” look. Mixing an *italic* word or a **bold** word in for emphasis is not often seen.

   Use the contrast between serif and non-serif typefaces as you would elsewhere. For example, if a title is in serif, have the body be in non-serif, or vice-versa. You probably already know more about such design than I do, and think I’m restating the obvious.

   Business design tends to be very conservative in fonts, colors and layout. While I don’t know any fonts you “must not use” you should avoid anything that “pops” or is overly exciting.

   But when it comes to marketing design, the sky is seriously not the limit over here. We have some products with labels where I cannot even READ the Japanese due to the wild font and blinding color choices. You certainly can’t do any worse than those (successful product) designers did!

   For public posters, displays, etc. treat them more like marketing design. (Again, unless it’s for a business conference or some such).

   Final note: Japanese people tend to use much more English than you’d expect. Sometimes English words are used to highlight and accentuate something where we would’ve used italicized fonts or a change in font.

7. They also use a few special markers like a three dot triangle to indicate importance…a bit like USA uses ‘*’ they also write waaaaaaay more words on a page generally so as to be sure to cover every and all eventuality. There’s no room for ambiguity….oh and kawaii fonts are often totally fine on relatively professional publications.