Questions for Font Creators Part 10: Characters of Interest Apart from Japanese Characters 2 “Korean Hangul”

The question “What kinds of characters are you interested in or would you like to design apart from Japanese characters (kanji, hiragana, katakana, and the Latin alphabet)?” was asked to staff at the Type Project.

In the previous article, the most commonly answer, Korean Hangul, was introduced. Apart from Korean Hangul, characters used in the languages in different areas were mentioned.

・

Arabic characters:
I actually saw characters used in the building of a mosque (not in the way they are used much in Japanese), and I became curious as they were very beautiful.

・

Indian characters, such as devanāgarī:
I’m interested in a diversity of transformation.

・

Thai characters:
I have a close Thai friend, I like Thai food, and I heard a story about Thai characters at Atypl, so I became interested.
https://note.com/sa_to_ru/n/n483035db5905

・

I’m interested in the characters that have no font yet, because I feel there is a meaning in remembering the culture of that character.

There are a wide variety of languages and characters used in these languages around the world, and each has a unique writing system and cultural background. As mentioned in the last answer, there are characters that have no font yet. What kinds of characters are used in what region, and why do they have their shapes? There must be many interesting discoveries, if we study the roots closely.

Apart from the characters, fonts related to illustration and ornamental elements are mentioned in the answers.

・

Icon fonts:
My roots are in painting and illustration, so I want to explore the fields more from the direction of fonts.

・

Printers’ flower (fleuron):
I’m interested in utilizing digital font technology to make fonts from ornamental elements, such as printers’ flower (fleuron), patterns, etc., apart from the characters.

Digital font technology is applied to not only typesetting characters, but also characters with illustration elements, such as emojis, icons, and ornament design.
An article on customized emojis on Slack was previously posted in the staff blog. I think it would be interesting to have a chance to also introduce the other emojis, illustrations, and ornamental fonts in the future.

(XYZ)