'Yohaku'

2016 / Typeface Design . Poster . Specimen Book

Yohaku is a traditional typeface that reflects the roots of the Japanese garden design with the raw and natural elements taken from the rocks which is the main focus of the Ryoanji Garden. 

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This concept is based on the Ryoanji Garden in Kyoto which shows the diagram of the fifteen stones from the book of Helmut Schmid, “Nippon no nippon”. From his poem in the book, he states about the five rock groupings of “five two three two three” and to him, the garden is emptiness. The idea of emptiness, which also means void and space as well as the space in the rock groupings form the basis of my concept. 

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The rocks are categorized according to vertically and horizontally placed stones in Japanese katakana characters as mentioned in the book, “Shots in the dark”. It is said that the oblique stones (ロ,ハ,ニ,ホ,ト,チ,ル,ヲ,ワ) are placed to fill the spaces in between the vertical (イ) and horizontal (リ,ヌ,カ,ヨ) stones. Hence, from each rock grouping, the oblique stones are selected and using the Japanese katakana characters that represent the stones for the selection of my elements.

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Using the elements selected from the Katakana characters and adopting the concept of the stone groupings of “five two three two three”, the number of grouped elements are going to be used according to the anatomy of the letter. For example, a two-storey letter ‘a’ has a tail, bowl and a terminal, it is three elements and three elements from the grouping of three stones will only be used for forming the letter. The concept of space in the typeface is reflected by the usage of the oblique rocks that fill the space in between the horizontal and vertical stones, which is like a space connection that brings out the beauty of the garden. Without the oblique stones, the formation of the stone groupings will be incomplete. 

Therefore, the concept of the beauty of space and the traditional elements that are used to construct each letter brings out the essence of the Ryoanji Garden, for my representation of Helmut Schmid as his works embraces the beauty of white space as well. 

The specimen book is viewed in such a way that resembles the exploration of the Ryoanji Garden, not having a definite start point and end point. In the specimen book, it talks about the construction of the letters, comparing legibilities to other typefaces as well as punctuations.