After the Akko fonts were published in 2010, the German discount supermarket chain “Penny” began using the typeface. Do you shop there? In lectures, Luc(as) de Groot has stated that he frequents Germany’s “dm” drugstores, since they use his Thesis fonts.

Yes, I love to shop at Penny supermarkets from time to time. Unfortunately there is no Penny in the town where I live. I would go more often if a store was closer. On the Autobahn, I often see big red trucks with the Penny logo and tagline, “Erstmal zu Penny.” It makes me feel happy whenever I come across my type in action. Recently when I was looking for study-aid books for my son in a bookshop in Germany, I spotted my Akko Heavy on the cover of Ulrich Knoll’s 33 Lehrer, mit denen Ihr Kind rechnen muss. In the United States I see paperback covers with my ITC Luna very often. Art Deco styles never go out of fashion!

You worked together with Gudrun Zapf von Hesse to create Diotima Classic — a lovely and delicate serif family. Decades ago, Hermann Zapf set their wedding invitations with the original metal-type version of Diotima. How was working with her different from collaborating with her husband?

Working with Gudrun is pretty much the same as it was with Hermann. They were both always very flexible and open, but they had severe eye for quality. During my collaborative projects with Hermann — Optima Nova (2002), Zapfino Extra (2003), Palatino Nova (2005), and Palatino Sans (2006) — he drove his car from his home in Darmstadt to Monotype GmbH (then Linotype) in Bad Homburg, where I work. But when the Diotima Classic project started in 2007, Hermann had already stopped driving. Since they didn’t use e-mail, our correspondence on the design was made by sending proofs per post. When I visited their home in Darmstadt to discuss the design details with her, I always carried my laptop with me so that I could make corrections in front of her eyes. Of course Hermann was always sitting with us and enjoyed watching our collaboration. He sometimes gave her advice about the details, but they never got into a quarrel. They were always in a good, harmonious mood. I also enjoyed to see how they discussed and respected each other. During the design refinement sessions, they told me about the old days of the D. Stempel AG type foundry, including the techniques their punchcutter August Rosenberger used, and their collaboration with him. The most exciting fact they told me was the story behind the design of a lowercase g in the original Diotima type. While studying proofs of Diotima from the 1950s, I found that the initial shape of g was completely different from the current one, so I asked Gudrun the reason for it. She explained to me that the first version of g, taken from her calligraphic work, never satisfied her. Then in 1953, three years after the first trials, when Hermann drew g on one of the proofs, she found that his letter g perfectly fitted the rest of the alphabet. So the Diotima type we know now is the result of a perfect marriage of the two talents.

I recently visited the design department at a university in China. The typography teachers there used Chinese-language editions of two books on western typography that you wrote in Japanese. I purchased these, and particularly enjoyed the photographs you included in Font No Fushigi; these books could also be useful for design students in English or German-speaking countries. Have you considered more writing projects for the future?

Both Oubun Shotai and Font No Fushigi were intended for the Japanese market, so I never imagined that they would be translated into Chinese and Korean. That was a pleasant surprise. In my books, I explain the basics of Latin typography to young designers who are interested, but do not know where to start. In other words, I wrote the books that I wanted to have myself when I was a student. In 1983 I graduated from an art university and began my career as a type designer in a Japanese font foundry. Six years later I left the foundry to study type design and typography in London. Up to that time, I had never been outside Japan, so I was simply overwhelmed by the big gap between Western and Japanese environments surrounding the type industry. Everything I saw was new to me. Even an ordinary-looking local library near my flat in Earl’s Court had a dozen books on typography. Stonecutters, calligraphers, and book designers gathered regularly to exchange their ideas; this was unimaginable in Japan in the 1980s. What I wrote in my books are the simple fundamentals I learned. People who’ve read my books — including well-known graphic designers — have commended them for their plain and uncomplicated explanation of the basics. On the other hand, they may be redundant for students who grew up in countries that use the Latin alphabet. Currently, I’m interested in public signs in Japan; I want to write a book about that, and I already have an idea in my head.

Almost 20 years ago, you designed Calcite for Adobe, and this has always been one of my favourite typefaces! It is amazing how it combines design elements from Renaissance chancery scripts with the aesthetic of digital post-modernism. Have you brought reinterpretations like that into other typefaces?

Glad to know that Calcite is one of your favourite types! Calcite was kind of inspired by Freeman Craw’s Ad Lib typeface. I had been fascinated with its contrast of round and straight lines, and outer and inner forms. I thought that a progression from complex to simpler forms could make an interesting typeface, and Calcite was my first such attempt. When I tried to simplify the inner forms of the alphabet to parallelograms, I was reminded of something I’d seen before — Arrighi’s calligraphy manual, published in the 16th century. My simple and systematic design principle and the Renaissance letterform matched very well and I liked it. Since then I have been developing my sans serif types based on more or less the same principle. Capturing the inner forms separately from the outer ones was what I learned from Japanese and Western calligraphy. When I drew a letter with black sumi ink on white paper, I realized that I was not looking at the black part. My eyes followed the edge of the writing tool, focusing very carefully on the shape of the inner counter which is the white part. My typefaces like Calcite, Tx Lithium, and Akko are typographic interpretations of how I see things.