Morisawa Shin Go and the story of Japan's Helvetica

What's the deal with this font?

Nintendo Wii fans will recognise the font in the above video, known as Shin Go, but its use all over Japan is much more prevalent. T2norway delved into the font’s history and why it’s used so much. Shin Go was inspired by a typeface called Gora which was digitised and amended by both Fontworks (NewRodin) and Morisawa (ShinGo) who made their own versions, thus resulting in a lawsuit which ultimately went nowhere.

Font related: a visual and oddly political history of the Wingdings font and a study into the fonts used by the top 1,000 websites

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