Onick

What is the Onick Font?

While researching the history of Onitsuka Tiger’s branding and graphic design, I came across an odd, yet highly appealing piece of custom lettering on the company’s ONICK ski boots from the 1970s. Reminiscent of aspects of the typeface Black-Out by Eli Carrico (released by my type foundry Wordshape), yet vertically compressed with razor-sliced counters and odd stencil element that makes up one of the legs of the “K”, the ONICK lettering is a potential source for an intriguing modular font.. I immediately thought of Ryoichi Tsunekawa as a potential collaborator to bring this piece of lettering to full-fledged life in the contemporary context. Based in Nagoya, Tsunekawa runs an independent type foundry called Dharma Type (http://dharmatype.com/), including three specialized foundry sub-labels: Flat-It, devoted to display lettering; Prop-A-Ganda, a series of fonts inspired by and based on retro propaganda posters, movie posters, retail sign lettering & advertisements in the early 20th century; and Holiday Type, a series of decorative and retro scripts for holiday use.. Beyond mere charm, Tsunekawa’s work is nuanced, detailed, and accessible due to its high level of finish. His fonts stand apart from his contemporaries in Latin typeface design in Japan due to his fascination with pop, vernacular and historical lettering from “non-pure” sources- whereas type designers like Kunihiko Okano and Akira Kobayashi have spent years analyzing the essence of Western letterform construction and unlocking the essence of Latin forms, Tsunekawa views surface and the awkward nature of his sources as being of value, as well.. His irreverence for the formal doctrines of history imbue his typeface designs with a rugged inventiveness that would be missed by most- glyphs without source designs are guessed at and approximated, often in a manner wildly divergent from what Western eyes would assume. It is in these moments that I find sheer delight in Tsunekawa’s work and what make me most pleased to invite him aboard Neojaponisme and Onitsuka Tiger’s type development project.. His assorted typefaces show an eclecticism in finish and as holistic systems- Tsunekawa’s return email to me about the proposed type project showed a digital sketch of how a completed typeface family from the source lettering might look, rendered with an effortlessness and dedication to detail that belies a skilled craftsperson. Further development showed Tsunekawa’s rigor- the typeface in development rapidly featured glyphs ignored by many: a full set of fractions, Eastern European diacritics and accents, superior and inferior numerals, alternate characters, and custom ligatures - all designed with regulated, detailed spacing.. Onick is a typeface Tsunekawa should be proud of- an homage to a moment in history rendered in the absolute best fashion. We are proud to present it to the world!

Onick Font Families

When you download Onick, the family will include the following font styles:

• Onick Regular

Preview of the Onick Font

If you want to see more previews for the Onick font, click here to use your own preview text.

Who Designed the Onick Font?

This font has 1 style(s) and was published by Wordshape.

Is Onick a Free Download?

Like all of the fonts listed here on The Font Bot, Onick is a premium font and is not available to download for free.

Please do not try to find a free download of Onick. If you really want this font for your new project, support the designer and the foundry and click here to purchase it officially.

I'm sure if you tried really hard, you could figure out how to download Onick for free. You might also get a virus on your computer or get hacked as a result. Not to mention it is illegal to use Onick if you did not pay for it.

How Much is Onick to Buy?

If you've made it this far down the page and you are really interested to use Onick for your new project, great!

The last time we checked the price for Onick, it was available for as little as $0.00.