What is the 57-nao font?

Designed in 1950s Japan by Okanao & Kushiro, the perfect partnership until artistic temperaments drove them apart. The duo spent years crafting the font with the working title “Messenjā”, Okanao bringing technical expertise to craft letterforms, while Kushiro made it his life, obsessively working late into the night to check pages for errors. For him the project was never about making money, it was an artistic endeavor to reprint the great Western works of literature. More… When he found out Okanao had secretly sold the rights to the font for use as a logo for a major Japanese manufacturer, Kushiro burned all evidence of the designs in a fit of passionate fury. The two reportedly never spoke again. “Messenjā” was thought lost forever until a type specimen was discovered in a vintage typewriter box bought on eBay. Now redrawn and available as 57-nao, a faithful and beautifully crafted monospace characterized by what is considered Okanao’s defining moment, the angular loop on the lowercase ‘a’.

57-nao Font families

The 57-nao includes the following font families:

• 57-nao Regular
• 57-nao Regular Oblique
• 57-nao Medium
• 57-nao Medium Oblique
• 57-nao Bold
• 57-nao Bold Oblique

57-nao Preview

Here is a preview of how 57-nao will look. For more previews using your own text as an example, click here.