From the MoMA Design Studio:

This exhibition features one of the last remaining capsules from the Nakagain Capsule Tower in Tokyo. The building, demolished in 2022, was an example of Metabolism—a Japanese architectural movement whose members believed that buildings could adapt over time.

MoMA’s capsule, A1305, anchors the exhibition and is visible to passersby on 53rd street. To pique their curiosity, we worked with the curatorial team to design a street-facing prompt that shares the history and significance of the capsule and invites them in with a question, “would you live here?”

Inside the museum, a bold title wall draws visitors in via a crowded lobby. The rounded typography is inspired by the capsule, and textured vinyl on the title wall directly references the capsule’s stucco-like exterior. Throughout the exhibition, the design balances English and Japanese titles as a respectful gesture to the building’s origin.

The exhibition’s signage combines Baste (from Lift Type) for the headlines with Source Han Sans for the Japanese text.

Visual artist James Jean 簡明 created the cover artwork for JJ Lin’s 20th anniversary album Happily, Painfully After. But I can’t say for sure that James also set the type. Discogs credits him with the album’s art direction and Yang Shi Ching 楊士慶 with the design.

The Chinese is set in Adobe’s Source Han Sans, specifically the Taiwan Traditional Chinese version. The English is set in DJR’s Megascope.

In particular, Megascope was expanded into several weights in the March 2023 installment of the Font of the Month Club. And shortly after, the album was revealed in early April 2023, which uses two weights of Megascope. A much heavier weight of Megascope was used in an ad campaign to the world live premiere of Happily, Painfully After.

TEATRIP JAPAN is an invitation to immerse in the fascinating world of Japanese green tea. In Japan, tea is much more than just a beverage—it is a living expression of culture. For centuries, the tea ceremony has been practiced in Zen temples—a meditative moment of silence, mindfulness, and deep respect that once brought not only monks, but even samurai a sense of inner peace.

The editors take readers on a captivating journey to the roots of this cultural tradition. Along the way, they meet tea farmers, merchants, and ceramic artists—individuals whose passion for tea began in childhood and continues to shape their lives. The book offers insights into the tea ceremony and the intricate hand-rolling technique known as temomi, all accompanied by atmospheric photography from the tea-growing regions of Kagoshima, Uji, and Shizuoka. Green tea enthusiasts will discover fascinating facts about different varieties, production methods, and preparation techniques.

Japanese green tea delights with its gentle sweetness and refreshingly fruity notes—a true sensory experience. TEATRIP JAPAN is a visual and cultural celebration—a heartfelt homage to an ancient tradition.

Published by Slanted Publishers in November 2025, the 232-page hardcover (21.5×29 cm) features linen binding, thread-stitching, and shortened pages, with full-color offset printing by Druckerei Vogl on Lakepaper Blocker Perfect White and Gmund handmade paper. Edited by Christian Beck (text), Stefan Braun, Frank Haala, and Lars Harmsen, with photography by Stefan Braun and design by Melville Brand Design, Lars Harmsen (CD), Mara Morawitz (AD), and Vera Pappenberger, the German-language edition is available under ISBN 978-3-948440-93-0 at a price of €69.90.

On view from 26 August to 23 November 2025, the 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, “Séance: Technology of the Spirit”, opens to the public at Seoul Museum of Art and other venues across the city. Inspired by occult, mystical, and spiritual traditions, key to the proposal is that these alternative “technologies” contest the accelerationist and rationalistic logics of capitalist modernity, and might therefore help us to resist – and reconfigure – the political and intellectual structures that shape our experience.

In response to the curatorial theme, graphic design studio nonplace developed a visual system founded on a series of radiant halos symbolizing spiritual energy. Their arrangement into modular structures expresses the organization of immaterial forces into the patterns and forms of art and techne, providing a flexible, transformable, and infinitely extendable visual system. (Text rephrased from nonplace)

For the identity of the biennale, nonplace chose Noto Serif Korean (see Source Han Serif), accompanied by Moulin Light from Commercial Type.

WS Craft’s upright and italic styles are mixed by graphic designer Bernardo Berga in Jazz Kissa, a book about the culture of jazz listening bars in Japan, published by creative agency and publishing house ERG Media:

Immerse yourself in the soul of Japanese listening culture with Jazz Kissa, an expansive photographic exploration of Japan’s iconic jazz cafés, known as Jazz Kissa. The book is the result of over fifteen years of dedicated work by photographer and cultural historian Katsumasa Kusunose, who has meticulously documented these intimate spaces and the people who keep their spirit alive.

Printed on specially sourced Japanese paper inspired by the texture of Altec A7 speakers and wrapped in a traditional OBI strip, Jazz Kissa is both a cultural document and a beautiful object in its own right.

The typefaces used on the obi strip are Eiko and Source Han Sans for the Japanese title, “ジャズ喫茶”.

This book traces how railroads became a contested symbol of modernity in late Qing China. Through the 1898 Hankow–Canton Railroad Contract between the Qing government and the American China Development Company, this project examines the intersection of imperial capitalism, fiscal reform, and provincial resistance. Drawing from archival contracts, engineering surveys, and historical writings, it reinterprets infrastructure as both a physical system and an ideological apparatus that reshaped colonial space. The visual design—restrained, archival, cartographic—mirrors the bureaucratic logic of control while revealing the tensions between modernization and subjugation embedded in these historical documents.

In association with JAGDA (Japan Graphic Designers Association), Kung Chichun (龚奇骏) at NEUE诺亦 and Dr. Sun Mingyuan (孙明远) curated the exhibition 一天世界：Graphic Design in Japan in Shanghai, China. STUDIO NA.EO 立入禁止 created the visual identity for this exhibition.

Clarendon is used for the main identity, which appears on posters, banners, and guidebooks. It is also used to set the (transliterated) names of featured designers and the titles of the informational text.

The secondary (Latin) type is Soft Text by Soft Type, which appears on the egg-packaging-inspired motion graphics and exhibition tickets. The egg meme originates from the Chinese mispronunciation of “JAGDA”, which sounds like a hen laying eggs. Soft Text may have helped convey the intentional mismatch and subtle humor. The motion graphics were created using a fork of BREAK GLASS by yasaman.

The specific Chinese types used—Songti (seriffed type) and Heiti (sans serif type)—are yet unidentified. The Songti is very likely Source Han Serif (Simplified Chinese version) while the Heiti could be from Founder.

Transforming words into actions

The State of Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) and the Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes (CDHC) launched a statewide service to support people targeted by hate. It had a phone number. What it lacked was the public’s awareness and trust. My team at Span was brought in to change that.

Working alongside UIC’s Institute for Healthcare Delivery Design (IHDD), we renamed, rebranded, and reintroduced the service to the public. The result was Help Stop Hate – a trauma-informed, multilingual, statewide service and campaign that reframed reporting not as retaliation, but as care in action.

Initially piloted as Illinois v. Hate, the helpline's name implied conflict and positioned the state as the protagonist. Moving away from tension to solidarity, the renamed service Help Stop Hate is a three-word promise. Help centers care. Stop signals urgency. Hate names the problem—without euphemism.

Three cuts of Grilli Type’s GT Planar were used, allowing ‘Help’ to lean forward into action, ‘Stop’ to lean back in urgency, and ‘Hate’ to sit still—unignorable. The visual language draws on civic forms: rigid diagonals, grounded color, modular composition. Designed to function everywhere from Chicago CTA ads to community newspapers and rural county billboards.

To reach survivors—not just residents—we kept the value proposition simple and kind. “Report hate, get support” is about access and letting people know: they are not alone.
This is where the secondary type Grenette come in with a quiet strength. Its rounded serifs and open forms contrast the sharpness of GT Planar, with enough tension to hold your attention. It reads almost tender, full of warmth and charm with a subtle nuance that feels hand-touched.

The Not in Our State campaign launched in the seven most spoken languages in Illinois: English, Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Hindi, Tagalog, and Mandarin. To complement the primary sans and serif styles of the identity, each language pairing used two typefaces. For Arabic, we selected Noto Sans Arabic and Noto Naskh Arabic. Hindi used Noto Sans Devanagari alongside Noto Serif Devanagari. Mandarin was set in Noto Sans SC (see Source Han Sans) and Noto Serif SC (see Source Han Serif).

Go Asia is an Asian grocery store with branches across Germany. For one of its prominent flagship stores, design agency KleinS has re-worked the navigation system of the Stuttgart branch, featuring JAF Bernina Sans for Latin type, paired with 思源黒体 (Source Han Sans) for Simplified Chinese.

More information on the rebranding can be found on the designers’ website.

A surreal cover art for the ambient album Magic Moments (2020) by PJS.

The cover features Glassure for the band (“PJS”), Microgramma Medium Extended for the release code (“Mana – 009”), and Source Han Serif Japanese for the Chinese text (“神奇时刻”), which translates to “magic moment”. Yes, the text is Chinese, despite being rendered in a Japanese font—presumably a stylistic choice. The title (“MAGIC MOMENTS”) seems to be custom lettering.

Released by VILL4IN, with cover design by Kevlar Estudio featuring art by Felix Rothschild.

[More info on Discogs]

Playtype’s Publish Gothic Condensed in use by graphic designer Louis Montes in his book Fragments of Time, made as part of his bachelor project at the Design department of the Royal Danish Academy. Louis Montes writes: ⁠

My photographic book investigating a fragment of the cultural positioning and visual view of Japan. This is done through 6 photographers (Keita Kusaka, Kisara Okada, Minami Sakamoto, Takahiro Mizushima, Yosuke Shimizu, Yuta Fuchikami) as part of my final bachelor project at The Royal Danish Academy of Design.⁠

The typeface used on the cover for Japanese text is yet to be identified [it’s the Chinese version of Source Han Sans Simplified (or Noto Sans Simplified), see comments].

Exhibition at Somerset House showcasing the work of Hanna Moon and Joyce Ng, two fashion photographers, celebrating the vitality and importance of fresh perspectives within fashion photography in a globalised and interconnected world.

Curated by Shonagh Marshall, the exhibition explores the artists’ feelings of being ‘lost in translation’, a feeling which, as artists living in a foreign city navigating different languages and shifting landscapes, informs Moon and Ng’s search for capturing beauty in the often overlooked and unseen narratives in our everyday lives.

Employing an otherworldly and playful approach to their practice, Hanna Moon and Joyce Ng incorporate cultural signifiers, set design and fashion to present their unique take on Western aesthetics and fashion ideals. Bringing distinct Asian perspectives to their work, they challenge the concept of ‘otherness’ and reflect upon the power fashion photography holds in shaping our perceptions of beauty, style and taste.

The exhibition designed by Studio Veronica Ditting pairs LL Catalogue and Univers: a serif and a sans serif, as a representation of how their works relate to each other. The typeface used for Hangeul and Chinese is yet to be identified [edit: it’s Source Han Sans, see comments].

Veronica Ditting, in conversation with It's Nice That:

Yes! So basically, I said okay and tried to figure out what they wanted to achieve in their respective works, the first thing being the structure. Hanna wanted her works on the wall, a more classic approach, and Joyce already knew she didn’t want anything on the wall and instead a free-standing structure. The third room was completely undefined at that point.

Quite early on I thought what if we gave them a bit of more an object-like quality and they were keen for the rooms to reflect each other, but not be exactly the same. It’s a bit like working out the layout of a page, you just follow your feeling of what makes sense. Then the wall panels we made are these powder-coated metal panels. They show the layers within the photography and with the typeface it was looking for a bit of tension between the two – how those two worlds could meet each other.

Spirit in a Box is the name of an exhibition at Is a gallery, Shanghai, presenting work by Hanyu Cui.

“Nature loves to hide” – the quote by Heraclitus – can be interpreted in the following slightly different ways: firstly, nature is difficult to be fully understood; secondly, nature is accustomed to hiding its essence and waiting to be read, which indicates that no matter how nature strives to present itself to our senses and emerge as a magnificent spectacle of the wax and wane, its deepest and most important essence is still hidden behind the appearance.

Exhibition organized by Ziming, poster by Siwang Chan.

The Impossible Objects brand identity uses Seb McLauchlan’s ABC Rom Narrow by Dinamo. The logo additionally uses Source Han Sans for its Hangul script version.

The I O grid serves as a pillar of our identity for Impossible Objects. We have further developed this concept for their website, allowing the brands to prominently feature at the forefront and be modularly integrated into the navigation stack.

Art direction by Imran Matin Khan, Nikita Iziev and Vincenzo Marchese Ragona.
Website developed by TwoMuch.

Edwin Europe have teamed up with the natural wine, rare vinyl and printed matter enthusiasts of Fro. Paris Est to celebrate the first anniversary of for a limited edition run of T-Shirts, with custom graphics by Diplomatie Studio. The typography pairs Karlsbader Grotesk with Japanese characters set in a yet unidentified typeface [edit: It’s Source Han Sans, see comments].

Sunday Supply is the title of Lunchbox’s first offline exhibition, presented on May 23, 2021 at Is A Gallery, Shanghai:

Lunchbox, a creative caterer based in Shanghai, has observed food purchasing patterns at retailers, restaurants, and city food suppliers of all scales, noticing what people are buying or not buying. At teatime on Sunday, Lunchbox will provide a buffet of foods that are normally less commodified, fetishized, or delicately presented in Shanghai’s broader culinary ecology.

For the poster design, I combined Times New Roman and Helvetica (English) with Source Han Serif (Chinese).

Perverted Norm, Normal Pervert is a project by artist Kuang-Yi Ku. Inspired by scientific research, it explores the normality and abnormality of sexual activities among humans and snails.

This bilingual book focuses on gender fluidity, depicting the reproductive system, reproductive structure, and mating posture of snails and humans in four chapters with black and white illustrations. On the cover, it attempts to echo the definition of “pervert and normality” explored by the artist by switching the sequence of the Chinese characters “變態的正常.”

The title and the running texts are set in Neue Machina by Pangram Pangram, and Chinese texts are set in Source Han Sans TC.

Dongbuk 4-gu is a district in the north east of Seoul. This newsletter for the local Public Lunch Center connects the farmhouse and the daycare center. It has the perfect size for children’s bags, and it’s designed for both guardians and children who enjoy receiving news. It was designed by Scenery of Today (오늘의풍경) using Sandoll Odongtong. The bold display typeface designed by Jooyeon-Kang and Yoona-Kim comes in three styles (plus three sets of dingbats). The newsletter uses Odongtong Fluffy with its scribbled look.

Urbanbooks, a content strategy company that proposes contemporary sensibility through paper, space, people, and products, has produced and published Samlip Hoppang’s brand book The Hoppang Book: The Archive.

The book tells the stories of Samlip Hoppang, which was first launched in 1971 and has given warmth to Koreans in every winter for 50 years. Hoppang (ho bread; 호빵) is a warm snack that is sold throughout South Korea. It is a convenience food version of jjinppang (steamed bread) and is typically filled with smooth, sweetened red bean paste.

Samlip’s custom brand typeface Sandoll Samliphopangche, designed by Sandoll, is used throughout.

A contribution to the 2020 Oesol Hangeul Hanmadang International Typography Poster Exhibition, using Sandoll GogoRound Condensed. The poster was designed by typedesigner Edik Ghabuzyan, who is one of the designers of Gogo Sans Rounded. He is also an initiator as well as a founder and a co-president of the international type design competition Granshan.

The meaning of the exhibition was further extended by the participation of Granshan’s type designers, who are working on the design and development of non-Latin fonts and the research of typography. Moreover, representative graphic designers in Korea showed various meanings of letters in the poster through the designers’ own interpretation and visualization of the text.

This is the description of the poster: “A living tree with pomegranates (grapes and pomegranates are national symbols of Armenia,) in the center of the poster, is in bud, symbolizing the continuation of a life. On the top of the poster, there is a dove, a symbol of peace and freedom. The root is shaped in a pen, symbolizing a historical period when the script was developed. There are symbols of eternity as well on its left and right sides.”