2023-10-19 | Megato
Megato — the Typeface with an Distinct Industrial Vibe
The Megato typeface has been under development by Andreas Seidel since 2019.
The main work on the Latin and Cyrillic characters took place between 2019 and 2020, with the Hebrew and Greek extensions added in 2021.
A major part of the Greek extension was done by Ingo Preuss.
Dr. Yossi Brill consulted on the Hebrew extension.
The development of the Japanese characters started in 2022 and is ongoing.
Currently 260 of the 2136 essential Japanese Kanji are included.
During this time, the development of the Megato typeface was influenced by considerations that arose in the development of typefaces for the gaming software industry.
Andreas has drawn numerous stencil fonts and created custom fonts.
A recurring requirement in these projects was a preference for fonts with design elements described as austere, sporty, industrial, futuristic and urban.
In addition, the fonts needed to be screen efficient and legible at smaller sizes.
Andreas also wanted the typeface to work in the dystopian sci-fi genre such as the films like Blade Runner, Dark Star, and Ghost In The Shell, or the computer games like the Fallout series or Cyberpunk.
In a light-hearted endeavour, he created Japanese Katakana to complement the Latin characters for some mockups, and later decided to add the Hiragana.
Both Katakana and Hiragana are known as «Kana».
The validation of Kana took about a year and was made possible by the generous support of Japanese expert Michael Santifaller.
However, using Kana alone limits the expressive possibilities to catchwords.
Common Japanese text is composed by combining Kana with «Kanji» characters.
Kanji are traditional Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system.
While the Megato family is not a replacement for a fully developed Japanese typeface, it is intended to provide alternatives, particularly in the display context.
Also, the Japanese characters in the Megato family are currently intended for horizontal text layout only.
Traditional vertical layout is possible, but requires more expertise from a native user.
Another unusual aspect is that the Japanese characters in Megato are not based on a square, but on a square that has been narrowed horizontally by 15%.
In the narrow Megato Cond (Condensed) styles, the Japanese characters are about 25% narrower than in the standard Megato.
For compatibility, Megato's italic styles include the upright characters of Hebrew and Japanese.
Their stroke weights are adapted to the italic styles.
Try it yourself!
For a limited time, get the Megato Light font license for the symbolic price of just 1 Euro.
Don't rely only on the limited web font preview.
To truly test these fonts, invest just 1 Euro in a complete font style.
