Shiko typeface and nóstos branding

Shiko Typeface and Nóstos brand design

Shiko:

Shiko is a typeface made as a tribute to typographer Helmut Schmid. This typeface was inspired by him, who lived and worked in Japan. Helmut Schmid eventually integrated into the Japanese society. Hence, he started to notice and appreciate the Japanese culture. He wrote a book, Japan Japanese speaking about the quiet beauty of Japanese in his own understanding and perception – A Japan that existed and still exists, yet one that needs to be discovered. In his book, he honoured a Japanese woodblock artist, Shiko Munakata.

Shiko Munakata's woodblocks are distinctive and different from other Japanese woodblock artists. He does the whole process of sketching, carving and printing all by himself, which wasn't typical. His woodblocks were known for their bold, spontaneous, suggestive and vigorous cuttings, executed in a speedy, rough-hewn and inhibited manner. He drives his gouges and knives into the wood like swords. He respects the materials a lot and does justice to it. If anything, he does turns out to be inferior to a non-treated block of wood, he regards it as a failure on his part to fashion his print; he has lost to the wood. Nonetheless, woodblocks remain timeless. Hence, from Shiko Munakata's woodblocks, the typeface Shiko was created and named after him.

Nowadays, people do not use print as much as the past due to the technological advancements. Even if they do use print, they use the modern printer and do not know how tedious the whole process of printing was in the past. As such, I want my typeface to serve as a reminder of the past, evoking a sense of nostalgia as the earliest form of printing was woodblock printing. Since Shiko is unable to preserve the history of print, I wanted it to be a typeface that encourages viewers to understand and think about the process and not forget its roots.

Visually, the spaces and gaps between the letters relate to both Helmut Schmid's designs which encompasses a lot of white space as well as Shiko Munakata's woodblock designs. They form negative and positive spaces, epitomising the most delicate of vibrations, profound stillness and infinite depth. But essentially, these gaps are spaces, a memory space within our mind. These memories may fade overtime, but we will always be able to recall this memory.

nóstos:

With the concept of this memory and nostalgia, it inspired me to create a stationery brand. The name of the stationery brand would be nóstos, naming it after the Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain" or "ache”. Focused on instilling a sense of nostalgia, my brand would speak to audiences on an emotional level. Considering that the digital age is going to expand faster than anything we knew in the analogue age, the rate at which things would become nostalgic would be much faster. The stationeries would remind them of the good old times when they were doodling away and writing on paper with pencils instead of looking at a lit screen in front of them and typing away at the keyboard emotionlessly. The stationery branding is a way for one to bring out their creativity, adding things using a pencil to a blank canvas. This blank canvas is like a creative receptacle, ready to receive inspiration to create.

Although nostalgia is often triggered by negative feelings, it results in increasing one's mood and heightening positive emotions, which can stem from feelings of warmth or coping resulting from nostalgic reflections and it promises an immediate return in the form of happy memories and comfort.