Hello, and welcome to the REN FONT foundry!
REN FONT has steadily built its reputation by repeatedly earning accolades in the Typeface category of the “Yearbook,” an exhibition organized by the Japan Typography Association (NPO). Founded in 2001 with the aim of bringing a fresh breeze to the font industry, REN FONT continues to create distinctive typefaces that stand out.
The hand-drawn-style fonts crafted by REN FONT’s type designer, Kazuo Kanai, have received high praise from professional designers and typographers for their exceptional quality.
A Message from Kazuo Kanai
With the exception of our comprehensive typeface Waon, our company has been particularly dedicated to producing kana fonts in the traditional Mincho and Gothic styles. Most of these fonts have been developed as multi-weight families — and there’s a good reason for that.
In Japanese text, kana characters account for roughly 70% of the total. Even so, kana fonts have little significance on their own; it is only when combined with kanji that they take on “meaning” and come to life.
Most vendors offer font weights in seven to nine variations, from “Light” to “Ultra,” but there are no universal standards for these weight categories — each vendor defines them differently. As a result, a “Light” weight from one vendor may differ subtly in thickness from another. For kana fonts to pair harmoniously with such variations and truly come alive, a finer gradation of weights is essential.
This is why our kana fonts feature such detailed weight variations.
Simply changing the kana can greatly enrich the expression of a typeface.
We hope you will make the most of our kana fonts, blending them freely with other typefaces to create combinations that perfectly suit your taste.
Versatile Typeface
Waon Pro 9-Weight Font Family
Each typeface in the 和音Pro (Waon Pro) family traces its origins to “Waon,” a winning entry in the typeface category of the Japan Typography Yearbook 2005 contest, hosted by the Japan Typography Association (NPO) in 2005.
Concept: “Expressing music through letters”
Every character set—kanji, hiragana, katakana, Latin letters, symbols, special-use characters, and numerals—was designed to carry unique musical qualities. These characteristics blend together in perfect harmony, resulting in a masterful work into which our type designer, Kazuo Kanai, poured over two years of dedicated effort.
This typeface was created with an experimental approach, mathematically generating intermediate weights from the lightest “L (Light)” to the heaviest “U (Ultra),” for a total of nine weights. The result is a finish truly worthy of the name “Waon” (“Harmony”). We invite you to enjoy its versatility in a wide range of applications.
The Waon Pro Joyo Regular is a free trial font of the Regular weight. While the kanji set is limited to Joyo kanji, all other characters are identical to the full product version. Please give it a try.
