Type The World With Morisawa Fonts’ Truly Gorgeous, Versatile Typefaces
By Mikelle Leow, 06 Jan 2025
Fonts aren’t just the spice of design—they influence the flavor and how someone feels about your work. Morisawa Fonts is serving up a typographic spread for designers eager to create across languages and mediums. Based in Osaka, Japan’s leading type foundry has turned its longstanding expertise into a global font subscription service, offering over 2,000 high-quality fonts tailored for everything from Japanese Kanji to Latin scripts.
While its fonts are a staple of Japan’s graphic and publishing industries, the company is expanding its reach with a subscription service that caters to multilingual and cross-border design needs. Its collection covers scripts ranging from Simplified and Traditional Chinese to Devanagari and Thai, and it’s fully licensed for use anywhere—a detail that matters when your designs need to travel as much as your clients do.
The service debuted in Japan in 2022 and launched its English version on February 29, 2024. To mark the occasion, Morisawa collaborated with Japanese musician Vaundy, featuring its fonts in the music video for his song, Okitegami. The foundry collaborates with global type powerhouses like Arphic, Sandoll, and Rosetta. In fact, its partnership with Taiwan’s Arphic Types expanded its Traditional and Simplified Chinese font offerings to include 35 font families.
Vaundy × Morisawa Fonts, Okitegami
Morisawa Fonts provides an intuitive search interface that helps designers find and shortlist typefaces from its extensive library. The service ensures all fonts are fully licensed for cross-border use, enabling designers to create work that transcends language barriers while maintaining typographic integrity. Users can also request customizations for specific fonts, ensuring their work remains as unique as the projects they undertake.
With such a broad range of fonts, you might be wondering which ones could suit your next project best. Whether you’re aiming for a modern aesthetic or timeless sophistication, there’s a typeface to match your vision. Enjoy a sampler of some of the solutions available at Morisawa Fonts below, and get started on your subscription here.
Shin Go
Shin Go stands out as a modern Gothic typeface with a systematic, no-frills design. Its bright, minimalist look ensures uniformity in both vertical and horizontal typesetting without requiring kerning. This makes it a versatile choice for creating clear and impactful designs. At larger sizes, Shin Go delivers bold visual impact, while its high legibility in smaller sizes makes it perfect for applications ranging from public signage to business cards.
A1 Mincho
This old-style A1 Mincho typeface is a timeless classic. Beloved for its graceful curves and the natural warmth of ink spread in kanji characters, A1 Mincho blends traditional Japanese elegance with a hint of 16th-century French influence. With three weights available (Regular/Medium/Bold), it’s a versatile choice for projects needing a sophisticated touch.
A1 Mincho
A1 Gothic
Designed as a sans-serif counterpart to A1 Mincho, A1 Gothic features rounded corners and subtle ink spread that add a sense of warmth. Available in four weights from Light to Bold, it’s ideal for clean, modern designs with a soft edge.
A1 Gothic
Ryumin
Ryumin balances sharp, chiseled strokes with soft serifs, creating a friendly yet professional feel. Whether for body text or headlines, this font’s harmonious flow makes it a favorite for digital and print compositions alike.
Ryumin Font. Vaundy × Morisawa Fonts, Okitegami
Aoto Gothic
Crafted specifically for screen use, Aoto Gothic is a modern sans-serif with a simple structure and smaller letterforms. Paired with Latin characters from Sharoa Pro, it’s perfect for bilingual typesetting and digital applications where clarity is key.
Sharoa Pro
A humanist sans-serif font with clear elements and wider counters, Sharoa Pro offers 10 weights and extensive OpenType features like small caps and numerals. It’s an excellent choice for long texts, titles, and even multilingual pairings alongside Aoto Gothic.
Sharoa Pro and Aoto Gothic
Role
The Role superfamily delivers four styles—Serif, Sans, Slab, and Soft—across more than 200 weights. Designed with input from type legend Matthew Carter, Role ensures cohesive visual identities for banners, corporate branding, and expressive content.
Role
Hiragino fonts
Embraced for their rounded Gothic designs, Hiragino fonts—created by SCREEN Graphic Solutions Co., Ltd.,—bring a touch of nostalgia and personality to titles and headlines. Their rich line modulation and unique terminal shapes make them a standout choice for projects that demand character and warmth.
Hiragino Sans Rounded Gothic Old. Hiragino Font is a font of SCREEN Graphic Solutions Co., Ltd.
Simplified and traditional Chinese fonts by Arphic Types
Morisawa’s partnership with Arphic Types brings a wealth of traditional and simplified Chinese scripts ready for use. With 35 families and over 700 fonts in total, these options range from minimalist to ornate, supporting multilingual projects that require a diverse palette of Asian typefaces.
Arphic Types fonts
Arphic Types fonts
Latin fonts by Occupant Fonts
Occupant Fonts, led by renowned type designer Cyrus Highsmith, adds a distinct Latin flavor to Morisawa’s library, completing the picture for multilingual support. With original typefaces crafted for clarity and character, these fonts work beautifully in bilingual and global design contexts.
Fonts by Occupant Fonts
As you can see, this abundant library offers something for every designer’s vision, transcending linguistic and cultural boundaries. Be it crafting a corporate identity, creating expressive visuals, or translating your work to various languages, Morisawa Fonts equips you with the versatility and elegance to bring your ideas to life.
This is a sponsored article.