In 2010, Kobayashi began working on a new original — in both senses of the term — typeface family, which started out as “a sans serif type with a ‘soft-focus’ effect.” Kobayashi adds, “From here, the design morphed into two families, Akko, which is robust and structured, and Akko Rounded, which is softer and friendly.” Picture this stylistic fusion: an industrial strength typeface like the DIN Next™ design, blended with an organic design like the Cooper Black™ typeface.
Both Akko™ and Akko Rounded designs have simple, compact letterforms, making them economical in terms of layout space. Kobayashi also paid particular attention to the design of the character counters and places where strokes joined. The subtly curved diagonal strokes of characters like the A,V, K, v and y ensure that there are no “dark spots” in text copy.
In addition, Kobayashi drew a suite of ligatures to accompany the standard characters. “I made c-t and s-t ligatures to add a historical context to the family. I also drew c-h, c-k and s-c-h ligatures for the setting of German.”
Each version of Akko is available in six weights ranging from thin to black – all with complementary italics. The family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, allowing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters. Pro fonts also offer an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages.
