Free Lithium Katakoto: "Irasshaimase" - Welcome to Our Shop
... and let us offer our new free gift with Typebox' second release of new typefaces.

"Katakoto" is a playful pun between "katakana" (Japan's own syllable characters for writing foreign words) and "kotoba" - 'words' (= 'leaves of speech'). While such wordplays are very popular in Japan, the word "katakoto" itself also has a meaning: the sounds that children produce when they begin to speak.

Based on the Light style of his 'Lithium' family, Typebox designer Akira Kobayashi has come up with a unique new concept: a bilingual "word-font" using the Japanese Katakana writing system. This idea is a definite first, and we hope it will make waves in the type community between East and West.

In recent years, western design has shown great interest in Asia: from Manga-comics over Kanji symbols to the clean-looking Katakana characters in rave flyers - at rather mixed levels of success. Akira writes: "Very often I see graphics that use Japanese characters just to achieve 'exotic' effects, but usually it looks strange to a Japanese eye, because the text there does not make sense. For the designer who wants a 'cool' look and wants to give a message that is clear to him AND to Japanese, a 'one-word, one-key' might be useful, ne?"

Yes, why not use the right words? That's what we offer now, in the simplest way possible. The Japanese language uses many English words nowadays, but usually transcribed into their Katakana system. In some cases there are no domestic words for new imported things; other times it's just more hip or easy to use the new English term.

"Lithium Katakoto" offers 26 words chosen for their everyday use in both English and Japanese, and for being handy and fun, in one nifty and educational font. All words are represented in one-to-one translations between Japanese and English, and are organized alphabetically by their initial in English: upper case = English words; lower case = Japanese translation.

Simply install this font like you would any other font. As you type, entire words will appear as shown above. Type an uppercase 'L' and you'll get "love" (rabu); type a lowercase 'l' and you'll get "ai".

Akira designed his "Katakoto" with proportional spacing, a new trend among Japanese type designers. Along with the expansion of horizontal typesetting in Japan, the simplified shapes of the Hiragana and Katakana systems lend themselves to more space-saving letterforms, which don't need to be based on the traditional square underlying vertical typesetting. As Akira specializes in the design of matching Latin and Japanese fonts, Katakoto's characters are proportioned in the slightly condensed style of his "Lithium Light", and can be used nicely in combination with the many faces of the Lithium font family.
"Tanoshinde ne!" We hope you enjoy.

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