Typesetting Japanese
- Started
- Last post
- 7 Responses
- pressplay
I have to set some Japanese texts. I have no clue what I am doing. Can you give me some tips/advices? What is the minimum size for example? Currently I am working with a system font called Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro...
Any help appreciated, thanks...
- honest0
what's the nature of the job? Advert? News column? Report? Online?
- pressplay0
it is an application for the eyewear of the year contest of an optical trade fair in tokyo. client wants to look his application according to his corporate design. so its not a big deal, just a few DIN A4 documents in English with Japanese translation. But I am clueless nonetheless.
- namiokudo0
Hi.
A4 format.
The minimum size for typesetting is normally 8 or 9 pt.
I suggest you have a good communication with the client.
Japanese typesetting is an art, same as English.
Do not hesitate to ask your client.
- Amicus0
are you using kanji or hiragana script. I'd be going a lot larger than 7pt for kanji. 10pt perhaps.
- tOki1
I have some experience -
If you are working with kanji, kerning is the same between every character - so often japanese will add extra space between kanji characters because of their complexity. Be particularly mindful of this if you are setting vertically (traditional japanese) as kerning in photoshop etc often fails there. Remember that a single kanji character will often be an entire word and should be given room to breathe.
When working with hiragana & katakana many of the same rules apply as with roman characters. Just look for inconsistencies in visual balance and tweak where necessary. You don't really need to understand what is written to do a good job.
One thing that I often also add is a space between japanese & roman sections of text of text to help improve legibility. Japanese does not generally have space between words, but this is an acceptable practice.
If you do need to have roman sections of text it's important to choose a font or family that either has a good roman set or can be matched with another font. One of the biggest challenges in this is that because of the crazy amount of time it takes to create a japanese font, weight options are often very limited and can therefore be very hard to match.
If you use romanized text, depending on the target audience you might also need to provide japanese next to or under it. This is because many senior Japanese simply cannot read english characters. It's also considered arrogant particularly in Business dealings.
The final peice of advice I have for you is that if you are using small sizes under 10 pt, make sure you have a light or book weight to use. As long as you are using a good printer this should work - heavier weights can potentially become very hard to read due to the complexities of kanji.
Here is something I've been working on recently for my girlfriends father.
- you should reverse the color, reversed text is not very "japanese", they prefer spacetypist
- what you said is not entirely true either, i think you speak of a western designer point of view, not understand japanese typographytypist
- the client asked for the reversed text specifically lol :)tOki
- also kerning in WA T ANABEAmicus
- then you should bold up the japanese as reverse texttypist
- It prints fine, but on screen the text does lose a bit of clarity. I've had it proof read by natural speakers.tOki
- and thx, i'll tighten that up! It's still a wiptOki
- sebastianfrench1
You need to understand the content before the context.
Kanji (Chinese characters, more strokes and curves)
Hiragana (Japanese writing system, alphabet)
Katakana (sound, or foreign words, more square straight line stroke)Good luck!
- pressplay0
thank you all, this has been very helpful, especially since I am assigned to make business cards now as well