What do you do when you are a designer and have to make frequent trips to Japan but you are unable to find the time to learn to read or speak the language? Why design a katakana typeface that has English phonetic sounds embedded of course! Thats exactly what Michael Johnson and his team at Johnson Banks have been working on and has named it “Phonetikana.”
In the example above you see the katakana representations of the sounds that a cow and sheep makes – MooΓ£β¬β¬Γ£ΖΒ Γ£ΖΒΌ and Baa Γ£ΖΒΓ£ΖΒΌ. Kinda cool although not something I would use but it would be a good design tool for illustrations, labeling and maybe even teaching.
Quick description of Katakana
Katakana is a syllable based writing system in Japanese used to write foreign and loan words such as names of persons, places and products. There are 46 of these angular characters which are different but similar to the more curvy Hiragana and more complex Kanji. Take a look at a Katakana chart I made a few years ago for this blog, then check out this cool site to see if you can remember them all.
‘phonetikana’ first seen on Design Boom and designed by Johnson Banks.
[smile]
Wow, this is cool! [jamaica]
That’s pretty cool! Not sure if I’d use it to study Katakana but it would definitely make a cool logo, and it would look good in other elements of a website as well.
yup, could really ad to a Japan design theme
Cool! I’m not sure is really helpful, but cool nonetheless.
I have one word to describe this.
“Boredom”
lol. Don’t really understand the purpose unless its used to actually learn.
how can a typeface be described as boredom? I did write in the post that it would be good for teaching, labeling and illustrations π
good news dread. finally Black Passenger Yellow Cabs: Of Exile and Excess in Japan, is available in jamaica at sangsters bookstore. let me know what you think. im in cayman right now, soo reach jamaica. hit me on facebook dread.