日本のタイポグラフィー展 Japanese Typography Exhibition

This is a poster for the “Japanese Typography Exhibition.” The characters depicted on the poster are not actual characters, but rather a design that combines elements of the brush strokes used in Japanese calligraphy, “tome,” “hane,” “harai,” and “ten”, to form a face. The teardrop shape in the upper right represents the form of a calligraphy brush when it first touches the paper, the straight line in the center, resembling the letter “J,” represents the stroke made when the brush is drawn downward, paused, and then released with momentum toward the left, the diagonally curved line in the upper left represents the stroke made when the brush is gently lifted toward the left, and the straight line at the bottom represents the stroke made by moving the brush straight across horizontally and then stopping and lifting it off the paper at the very end.