TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Dec 13 00:51:30 EST 2024

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ABOUT

Omega Type Foundry [Toshi Omagari]

Toshi Omagari is a Japanese type designer who grew up in Fukuoka and studied typography and type design at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. After graduating in 2008, Toshi taught graphic design in Fukuoka. He joined the University of Reading in the summer of 2010 and graduated in 2011. He is a type designer at Monotype.

His graduation typeface Marco (<2011), which is named after Marco Polo, covers Latin, Mongolian, Greek, and Cyrillic, and has sans and serif versions. Inspiration for Marco goes back to Italian humanist typography such as those of Nicholas Jenson or Aldus Manutius, and general influences from calligraphy. Marco is a true superfamily, with wide utility and superb legibility---not surprisingly, it won an award at Modern Cyrillic 2014. The text styles were professionally produced in 2015 by Type Together in 2015---each style has over 1900 glyphs.

His chancery hand typeface Tangerine (2010) is part of the Google font directory (for free web fonts).

Typefaces from 2013: Metro Nova (Linotype: a sans family with a strangely circumcised lower case f). Metro Nova won an award at TDC 2014.

Typefaces from 2014: Neue Haas Unica and Neue Haas Unica Pan European. A digital update of the Helvetica alternative Haas Unica, which was originally released in 1980 by the Haas Type Foundry for phototypesetting.

In 2015, he made Cowhand (Monotype: a Western typeface). All words typed in Cowhand are of equal width, whether they contain one character or twenty (the maximum the font allows).

For Monotype, he made the custom typeface Quentin Blake (2016) that emulates the irregular handwriting of Sir Quentin Blake, acclaimed illustrator of Roald Dahl's novels.

In 2017, Toshi Omagari designed the Wolpe Collection for Monotype, all based on Berthold Wolpe's distinctive typefaces: Wolpe Pegasus, Wolpe Tempest, Wolpe Fanfare, Sachsenwald (blackletter: a revival of Berthold Wolpe's Sachsenwald from 1936), Albertus Nova.

In 2018, Linda Hintz and Toshi Omagari published the large geometric sans typeface family Neue Plak that revives and extends Paul Renner's Plak (1928).

Nadine Chahine and Toshi Omagari collaborated with Akira Kobayashi and Monotype Studio on Avenir Next Arabic (2021).

At his own foundry, Omega Type, he released these typefaces in 2021: Klaket (a bold and monolinear Arabic display typeface that was inspired by classic Egyptian film posters in a free form Ruqah style), Platia (a modern revival of the 19th century font Hellenic Wide).

At ATypI 2011 in Reykjavik, he spoke about Mongolian scripts. At ATypI 2015 in Sao Paulo, he revealed his research on the Siddham (post-Brahmian). Speaker at ATypI 2016 in Warsaw on BubbleKern (a new kerning algorithm). Speaker at ATypI 2017 Montreal on Sini: Arabic calligraphic styles from the Far East.

Fontsquirrel link. Dafont link. Klingspor link. I Love Typography link. Google Plus link. Interview by MyFonts in 2022.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Omega Type Foundry
 [Designer info]
Dafont page
Klingspor Museum page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Japan ⦿ Calligraphic typefaces ⦿ Mongolian fonts ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ Readability & Legibility ⦿ Chancery hand, cancellaresca ⦿ Western fonts ⦿ Handwriting fonts ⦿ Lapidary typefaces ⦿ Blackletter fonts ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Typefaces and type design for Arabic ⦿