Japanese Gothic

ゴシック体 / late 19th century– / Style / Type Classification

The Japanese sans-serif of nearly even strokes: born for headline emphasis, it grew into the text face of the screen.

Japanese Gothic — Japanese Gothic on a station name sign (CC BY 3.0) · © Bergmann at Japanese Wikipedia This photo was taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9
Japanese Gothic on a station name sign (CC BY 3.0) · CC BY 3.0 · © Bergmann at Japanese Wikipedia This photo was taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9
Japanese Gothic — Japanese Gothic on a road sign (CC BY-SA 4.0) · © Katorisi
Japanese Gothic on a road sign (CC BY-SA 4.0) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Katorisi
Japanese Gothic — 京急800形の方向幕 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Sakurayama 7
京急800形の方向幕 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Sakurayama 7

At a glance

Visual cues

  • Even strokes
  • No uroko
  • High visibility
  • Fit for screen display

Best used for

  • Wayfinding in stations and hospitals that must read at a glance
  • Interface labels and screen text that need even weight at low resolution

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Dictionary entry

Type
One gothic family as the base, no more than three weights
Composition
Cut information per line before enlarging type, protect the margins
Material
Fix contrast ratio first, reserve light weights for large sizes
Caution
This is not the Latin sans translated, so work through the kana skeleton and the density gap of kanji, and keep heading, text and note apart instead of setting everything in gothic.
Further study
Tsukiji's early gothics / Ishii Gothic / Hiragino Kaku Gothic and Yu Gothic

Related entries

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Cite this entry

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Link
https://indexstyle.org/styles/japanese-gothic
Markdown
[Japanese Gothic — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/japanese-gothic)
HTML
<a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/japanese-gothic">Japanese Gothic — IndexStyle</a>

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