×

BLACK
LIVES
MATTER

As designers committed to decolonizing our practices, we feel that it is important for us to help amplify Black voices that have historically been underrepresented within our discipline. We are using this site as a public platform in support of Black Lives Matter within our communities and beyond. We ask that you take some time alongside looking at our work, to explore these collected resources.

FOR DESIGNERS:

Dear white & non-Black POC designers
Where are the Black designers?
Decolonial Teaching in Action

FOR EVERYONE:

Anti-Racist Resource Guide: Become a better ally
A Radical Library (incl. books, texts, podcasts, & articles)
How to talk to people who disagree
How to support Black artists

Emi Takahashi 🏅

KACHI-BUWA

Onomatopoeic expressions are elements of speech and writing which convey meaning through phonetic imitation. "KACHI BUWA" investigates how graphic representation can communicate the nuances in connotations and culture-specific contexts expressed by onomatopoeia in the Japanese language. This project exists as a body of typographic work orbiting around a conceptual variable Katakana typeface which aims at bridging sound, form and signification while being embedded in Japanese visual culture.

Onomatopoeias speak their meanings through both sound and form, breaking linguistic barriers and granting a strictly iconic form of communication.

KACHI-BUWA Live: kachibuwa.com
Project Website: emitakahashi.ca/kachibuwa

Web Design
Publication
Typography
Type Design

About the designer

Hello ☺ My name is Emi, I’m a designer living in Toronto, ON. My work focuses on typography, type design and editorial design. I’m inspired by visual rhymes in nature, semiotic processes and the vernacular. My other passions include collecting rocks, talking to my plants and listening to muzique.

Favourite typefaces?

Times Dot !

Information about the KACHI-BUWA typeface is primarily relayed and circulated through a reproduced designed artifact─a newspaper. The specimen captures the expressive spirit of the typeface while presenting technical and typographic details.
KACHI-BUWA type specimen spreads.
The variable typeface is inspired by the “kiki-bouba” effect, a cognitive mechanism that demonstrates the non-arbitrary relationship between sound and form. KACHI-BUWA captures the “kikiest” and “boubaest” of Japanese onomatopoeic expressions and anything in between.
Onomatopoeic zines that explore the use of the typeface in several cultural and grammatical experimental contexts. Divided into four semantic sections: auditory, sensory, visual and emotional, the typographic zines help readers navigate Japanese onomatopoeia with a hovering cultural sensibility.
Left: Auditory Expressions
Right: Sensory Expressions
Visual landscape of Japanese onomatopoeic expressions, set in KACHI-BUWA.

Recession Grads is a digital archive & exhibition set to showcase the work of the Graphic Design 2020 graduating class at OCADU.

INSTAGRAM

BLM RESOURCES