Rajesh Punjabi 03812304 GR616 - Influences Akira Kobayashi Akira Kobayashi was born in 1960 and studied at the

Musashino Art University in Tokyo. He studied there from 1979 to 1983 before attending the London College of Printing for six years to study calligraphy. Kobayashi took a job at Sha-Ken Co Ltd, a manufacturer of phototypesetting machines, where he worked from 1983 to 1989. Akira then worked at Jiyu-Kobo Ltd where he designed the Hiragino Mincho typeface, along with a Latin variation Hiragino Roman, for Dainippon Screen Co. TypeBank designing Latin alphabets for each of the 17 digital Japanese fonts at TypeBank. In 1990 Kobayashi released the typeface Skid Row. Kobayashi worked as a freelance type designer from 1997-2001 initially doing a lot of work for the International Typeface Corporation, ITC. ITC Woodland in 1997 followed by ITC Scarborough, ITC Japanese Garden, ITC Seven Treasures, ITC Luna, ITC Silvermoon all in 1998. ITC Magnifico and ITC Vineyard in 1999. Akira designed FF Acanthus and Clifford for FontShop International between 1998 and 1999. He won Best of Category and Best of Show in the 1998 U&lc magazine type design competition for Clifford. He won the Kyrilltsa competition for ITC Japanese Garden. Calcite Pro in 2000 for Adobe Systems and Linotype Conrad for Linotype Library. He won 1st prize in Linotypes third International Type Design Contest for Conrad. In 2001 he designed TX Lithium for TypeBox. In May 2001, Akira Kobayashi became the Type Director at Linotype Library and recently completed the Optima nova family of typefaces along with Hermann Zapf, a german type designer who created the original Optima typeface.

ITC Japanese Garden. 1998. Akira Kobayashi

Clifford. 1998. Akira Kobayashi

Conrad. 2000. Akira Kobayashi

Optima Nova. 1998. Akira Kobayashi with Hermann Zapf