Shimon Hoshino Std
Typeface Development — Designed by BRANCHES
Manifesto
A typeface created for sound designer and perfumer Shimon Hoshino.
Bearing his name, Shimon Hoshino Std was designed to give form to his creative vision and body of work.
It extends the sounds and scents he creates into the visual realm, becoming a set of letterforms through which his ideas and expression can be carried into the future.
Concept
Shimon Hoshino creates music through improvisation, leaving behind singular compositions that could exist only in the moment of their creation.
Inspired by this approach and the ephemeral expression born from it, Shimon Hoshino Std was created as an attempt to translate sound into a visual language.
Letters that endure alongside sound, passed on to generations to come.
Typeface Development
Sound—and music—can be preserved as a record, carried across generations and through the passage of time.
From this perspective, the music performed by Shimon Hoshino on the piano is no different.
This typeface began with a simple question: How can sound be preserved? How can it be remembered?
Created with the hope that it will endure for hundreds, even thousands of years, Shimon Hoshino Std draws inspiration from letterforms carved into stone inscriptions—forms designed to outlast the eras in which they were created.
Its expressive strokes, together with edges that weave curves and straight lines into a single structure, embody both the freedom of surrendering to the flow and the sincerity of seeking connection with others.
The diagonal strokes are set at 26.565°, the angle of the traditional Japanese architectural principle known as the five-sun slope (gosun kobai), a proportion historically used to improve durability.
By incorporating this angle, the typeface itself becomes a vessel for the idea of permanence and inheritance.
Shimon Hoshino's life is filled with sound.
May every note he leaves behind one day reach someone, somewhere, in a time yet to come.
Shimon Hoshino Std
Typeface Design: BRANCHES