円 design standards

James Puckett

I’m putting 円 in my fonts in case it ever gets used in decorative English. Are there design standards for this character or can I just wing it?

Thomas Phinney

Well, 円 is the Japanese yen symbol (as opposed to the western version ¥). So, like most characters, it has a lot of history and legit users will have expectations.

Can you explain more about your intention, in including it? Decorative how?

Ray Larabie

It can be very stylized. Since your character won't have to coexist with other kanji, you can go wild. If your typeface has a stroked appearance, you might want to use the correct stroke order. First is a left stroke from top to bottom. That's followed by the 7 shape, which is written as a single stroke with an inward flick at the end. The middle stroke goes down to the center and finally a horizontal stroke from left to right. There's no idea of a common crossbar height in kanji, so you should try to keep the horizontal stroke around the middle. A common mistake with kanji is to try too hard to align strokes to base and cap lines, but in some cases like this one, aligning to base and cap is fine. It's possible to eliminate the hook in a minimalist/techno/deco context, as there's no danger of it being misconstrued for another character. They go to the same kinds of stylized extremes as we do in Latin, so don't hold back. In a lazy handwritten context, the top right corner gets rounded off.

Simon Cozens

There is no design standard for 円 because it is just a kanji letter (en, circle). So in general, it would be part of a kanji font and its design would be determined by the rest of the kanji characters in the font: in a minchotai (~= serif) font, it will be minchotai; in a gothic font, it will be gothic; and so on.

In a decorative style (popputai), anything goes - draw something which suits.

James Puckett

Thomas Phinney said:

Well, 円 is the Japanese yen symbol (as opposed to the western version ¥). So, like most characters, it has a lot of history and legit users will have expectations.

Can you explain more about your intention, in including it? Decorative how?

Decorative English is when Japanese designers use English that’s intentionally broken or nonsensical. For example “Has high functionality” or “Like a magic,” both of which have appeared on clothing in Japan. I thought that maybe there’s a sad designer just looking for a Latin font that has a matching 円 to use in a silly sign hanging up in a store.

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

aka "Engrish"