I can cope with seeing my Supporter typeface disappear from the D&AD judges’ table when lovely things like this survive the cull. Phonetikana by Johnson Banks is a take on the Japanese katakana phonetic alphabet, which actually shows English speakers how to say things. I guess it works in reverse too, helping Japanese people learn the roman alphabet. It’s not new, they did it a while ago, but it did just receive a D&AD nomination last week.

It’s great. I know that because I studied Japanese for two years (an endeavour cruelly crushed by the onset of habitual brand agency overtime) and always loved the phonetic alphabets hiragana and katakana. Japanese has complex symbols, abstract Kanji which are derived from the Chinese language and pretty impenetrable at times, but they also use two phonetic alphabets, mainly for foreign language words or elements of grammar.

It’s funny, because there aren’t all the same sounds in Japanese as there are in English, reading them out forces you to adopt a comedy Japanese accent.

These katakana characters often find their way into technological things, signs and brand names. When you see things like Uniqlo or Wagamama written out in the UK, these are the letters they’re using.

These Kana fascinated me while I was learning Japanese and I still get a kick out of the fact that I can actually read them in things like manga or imported videogames. The Kanji on the other had were an uphill struggle. I’ve always wanted to spend some real time in Japan to get under the skin of it all, but sadly, design is a very hard thing to get into there as a Westerner.

Johnson Banks have quite an interest in Japan, and seem to have made the leap into working over there. The identity they did for the Sendai Observatory was beautiful…

…and the UK-Japan logo feels in hindsight like the genesis of the phonetikana idea…

Lovely. Makes me want to restart my Japanese course again. While I love the idea of alternative alphabets, I did have to pass recently on the frankly terrifying prospect of developing an Arabic version of Supporter.

If you’re looking for a book on the Kana alphabets, I recommend Remembering the Kana which helped me a lot.