A series of five type specimen books for the Japanese foundry Morisawa. The font, Role, was designed by Matthew Carter and is Morisawa's first commissioned Latin typeface. The full family of fonts consists of four main styles—Serif, Sans, Slab, Soft—each with three optical weights (text, display, and banner) and eight thickness weights. All together there are over 200 fonts in the set.
In keeping with the expansiveness of the font, the production for the specimen books was elaborate. We worked closely with an editorial team to come up with four different personae to represent each of the main styles. They then commissioned writers to create short texts introducing each personae and paired this with found quotes and texts. Additionally, we designed printed ephemera that were related to each personae and photographed scenes using the ephemera.
Finally, the covers of each booklet used a blurred letterform in colors that bleed from book to book—uniting them in a sequence and leaving room for more fonts to be added in the series. They were then bound together with a bellyband and presented at Typographics in New York.
