Typography

Get the typeface on Github

hibana (Sans-serif)

“If our voices were loud enough to threaten the fireworks, perhaps we could change something, but in reality our voices are pitifully small—only those who truly want to listen can hear them.”

“如果我们的声音大得足以威胁到烟火，或许还有可能改变什么结果，但实际上我们的声音小得可怜，只有认真想听的人才听得见。”

hibana (火花), literally “spark”, is a sudden yet grand scheme. At the end of January 2012, I sat by a window on Nathan Road, staring absentmindedly at Victoria Harbour. The crowd on the street surged forward, constantly evaporating the damp chill from the drizzle. Fireworks took turns lighting up the sky, and the crowd seemed to fall into a state of susceptible euphoria. When the final firework ascended, the crowd held its breath for that rising ball of fire. I’m captivated by this silence—it satisfies the eager anticipation on the verge of breaking forth and the unrealistic expectations. At the moment of explosion, everyone is illuminated in that brilliant instant, finding their own reflection in those sparks.

hibana（火花），是突然而宏大的预谋。二〇一二年一月末，我在弥敦道旁的窗边，盯着维港出神。街上的人潮向前涌动，不断蒸发着细雨里的阴冷温度。烟花轮番上演，人群仿佛陷入易感的狂喜。当最后一发烟花升起时，人群将呼吸留给了那截上升中的火球。我沉迷于这种沉默，它满足了呼之欲出的热切和不切实际的期待。爆炸时，每个人都在灿烂的一瞬间被点亮，又在那片火花中找到自己的倒影。

hibana is proof of presence. It was designed from this selfish impulse—it is my externalization, my reflection. It is an open-source sans-serif typeface committed to supporting all the world’s languages. In the spring of 2020, it had only one weight (450) between regular and medium, with a relatively wide character width. hibana originates from Naoki Matayoshi’s novella of the same name, which won the 153rd Akutagawa Prize.

hibana 是一份在场证明。它即出于这种私心设计，是我的外化，也是我的倒影。它是开源的无衬线体并致力于支持世界上的所有语言。它在二〇二〇年春只有一种介于常规体和中粗体间的字重（450），属于一种相对偏高的字宽。火花源于又吉直树（Naoki Matayoshi）的同名中篇小说，它获得了第153回芥川龙之介赏。

Highlights

ΛευκωσίαİstanbulGöteborgZürichİzmirMontréalБеоградTórshavnNairobiSanta Cruz de Tenerife ΛευκωσίαİstanbulGöteborgZürichİzmirMontréalБеоградTórshavnNairobiSanta Cruz de Tenerife KøbenhavnΘεσσαλονίκηКиївNouméaΑθήναСамараStockholmRomaKošiceTiranë KøbenhavnΘεσσαλονίκηКиївNouméaΑθήναСамараStockholmRomaKošiceTiranë ВладивостокSão PauloWrocławKrakówMedellínLagosПодгорицаAmsterdamAccraPapeete ВладивостокSão PauloWrocławKrakówMedellínLagosПодгорицаAmsterdamAccraPapeete BogotáReykjavíkLa HabanaCluj-NapocaΗράκλειοМинскVallettaAbidjanBuenos AiresApia BogotáReykjavíkLa HabanaCluj-NapocaΗράκλειοМинскVallettaAbidjanBuenos AiresApia AnchorageTimișoaraMálagaWhanganuiMéxico CityНур-СултанЮжно-СахалинскDakarPhoenixLubumbashi AnchorageTimișoaraMálagaWhanganuiMéxico CityНур-СултанЮжно-СахалинскDakarPhoenixLubumbashi

Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Greek Character Coverage

Hibana is designed to support broad multilingual writing systems while keeping tone and proportions consistent.
Cămaşă

locl Romanian & Moldovan Localized Forms
Пловдив

locl Bulgarian & Serbian Localized Forms
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

ss02 Stylistic Set Flexibility

Four stylistic sets (ss01-ss04) provide alternate forms for a, g, Q, and kinetic letterforms without breaking text color.
To strike the spark, one must know both the flint and the steel.

dlig Discretionary Ligatures

Replace default glyphs with alternate forms which provide better joining behavior.
Changing case to Small Caps.

smcp Small Caps
09:41:07 AM PST

calt Contextual Alternates For Time

Specimens

Précipitation

Susceptible

Conflagration

Simultaneous

Encendimiento

Überzeugung

Ταυτόχρονα

Просветление

Açıklanması

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain, by the false azure in the windowpane.

Я был тенью свиристеля, убитого Ложной лазурью оконного стекла.

MACWORLD SAN FRANCISCO—January 9, 2007 09:41 AM PST

This batch of eighty cards was held by a rubber band which I now religiously put back after examining for the last time their precious contents. Another, much thinner, set of a dozen cards, clipped together and enclosed in the same manila envelope as the main batch, bears some additional couplets running their brief and sometimes smudgy course among a chaos of first drafts. As a rule, Shade destroyed drafts the moment he ceased to need them: well do I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them in the pale fire of the incinerator before which he stood with bent head like an official mourner among the wind-borne black butterflies of that backyard auto-da-fé. But he saved those twelve cards because of the unused felicities shining among the dross of used draftings. Perhaps, he vaguely expected to replace certain passages in the Fair Copy with some of the lovely rejections in his files, or, more probably, a sneaking fondness for this or that vignette, suppressed out of architectonic considerations, or because it had annoyed Mrs. S., urged him to put off its disposal till the time when the marble finality of an immaculate typescript would have confirmed it or made the most delightful variant seem cumbersome and impure. And perhaps, let me add in all modesty, he intended to ask my advice after reading his poem to me as I know he planned to do. In my notes to the poem the reader will find these canceled readings. Their places are indicated, or at least suggested, by the draftings of established lines in their immediate neighborhood. In a sense, many of them are more valuable artistically and historically than some of the best passages in the final text. I must now explain how Pale Fire came to be edited by me. Immediately after my dear friend’s death I prevailed on his distraught widow to forelay and defeat the commercial passions and academic intrigues that were bound to come swirling around her husband’s manuscript (transferred by me to a safe spot even before his body had reached the grave) by signing an agreement to the effect that he had turned over the manuscript to me; that I would have it published, without delay, with my commentary by a firm of my choice; that all profits, except the publisher’s percentage, would accrue to her; and that on publication day the manuscript would be handed over to the Library of Congress for permanent preservation. I defy any serious critic to find this contract unfair. Nevertheless, it has been called (by Shade’s former lawyer) “a fantastic farrago of evil,” while another person (his former literary agent) has wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade’s tremulous signature might not have been penned “in some peculiar kind of red ink.” Such hearts, such brains, would be unable to comprehend that one’s attachment to a masterpiece may be utterly overwhelming, especially when it is the underside of the weave that entrances the beholder and only begetter, whose own past intercoils there with the fate of the innocent author. As mentioned, I think, in my last note to the poem, the depth charge of Shade’s death blasted such secrets and caused so many dead fish to float up, that I was forced to leave New Wye soon after my last interview with the jailed killer. The writing of the commentary had to be postponed until I could find a new incognito in quieter surroundings, but practical matters concerning the poem had to be settled at once. I took a plane to New York, had the manuscript photographed, came to terms with one of Shade’s publishers, and was on the point of clinching the deal when, quite casually, in the midst of a vast sunset (we sat in a cell of walnut and glass fifty stories above the progression of scarabs), my interlocutor observed: “You’ll be happy to know, Dr. Kinbote, that Professor So-and-so [one of the members of the Shade committee] has consented to act as our adviser in editing the stuff.”

THE MOST IMPORTANT occurrence within the crowd is the discharge. Before this the crowd does not actually exist; it is the discharge which creates it. This is the moment when all who belong to the crowd get rid of their differences and feel equal.These differences are mainly imposed from outside; they are distinctions of rank, status and property. Men as individuals are always conscious of these distinctions; they weigh heavily on them and keep them firmly apart from one another. A man stands by himself on a secure and well defined spot, his every gesture asserting his right to keep others at a distance. He stands there like a windmill on an enormous plain, moving expressively; and there is nothing between him and the next mill. All life, so far as he knows it, is laid out in distances the house in which he shuts himself and his property, the positions he holds, the rank he desires-all these serve to create distances, to confirm and extend them. Any free or large gesture of approach towards another human being is inhibited. Impulse and counter impulse ooze away as in a desert. No man can get near another, nor reach his height. In every sphere of life, firmly established hierarchies prevent him touching anyone more exalted than himself, or descending, except in appearance, to anyone lower. In different societies the distances are differently balanced against each other, the stress in some lying on birth, in others on occupation or property. I do not intend to characterize these hierarchies in detail here, but it is essential to know that they exist everywhere and everywhere gain a decisive hold on men’s minds and determine their behaviour to each other. But the satisfaction of being higher in rank than others does not compensate for the loss of freedom of movement. Man petrifies and darkens in the distances he has created. He drags at the burden of them, but cannot move. He forgets that it is self -inflicted, and longs for liberation. But how, alone, can he free himself? Whatever he does, and however determined he is, he will always find himself among others who thwart his efforts. So long as they hold fast to their distances, he can never come any nearer to them. Only together can men free themselves from their burdens of distance; and this, precisely, is what happens in a crowd. During the discharge distinctions are thrown off and all feel equal. In that density, where there is scarcely any space between, and body presses against body, each man is as near the other as he is to himself ; and an immense feeling of relief ensues. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no-one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd. But the moment of discharge, so desired and so happy, contains its own danger. It is based on an illusion; the people who suddenly feel equal have not really become equal; nor will they feel equal for ever. They return to their separate houses, they lie down on their own beds, they keep their possessions and their names. They do not cast out their relations nor run away from their families. Only true conversion leads men to give up their old associations and form new ones. Such associations, which by their very nature are only able to accept a limited number of members, have to secure their continuance by rigid rules. Such groups I call crowd crystals. Their function will be described later. But the crowd, as such, disintegrates. It has a presentiment of this and fears it. It can only go on existing if the process of discharge is continued with new people who join it. Only the growth of the crowd prevents those who belong to it creeping back under their private burdens.

Glyphs

Uppercase

Lowercase

Uppercase Accents

Ắ

Ằ

Ẵ

Ấ

Ầ

Ẫ

Ḅ

Ḍ

Ế

Ề

Ễ

Ẽ

Ḥ

Ɥ

Ḯ

Ḷ

Ḿ

Ṅ

Ṇ

Ố

Ồ

Ỗ

Ṓ

Ṑ

Ṍ

Ṣ

ẞ

Ṭ

Ẃ

Ẅ

Ẁ

Ỳ

Ỹ

Ẓ

Lowercase Accents

ắ

ằ

ẵ

ấ

ầ

ẫ

ḅ

ḍ

ế

ề

ễ

ẽ

ḥ

ḯ

ḷ

ḿ

ṅ

ṇ

ố

ồ

ỗ

ṓ

ṑ

ṍ

ṣ

ṭ

ẃ

ẅ

ẁ

ỳ

ỹ

ẓ

Single Storey a - ss01

Kinetic a, e, g, s, G, S - ss02

Ṣ

ẽ

ṣ

Bisecting Q - ss03

Single Storey g - ss04

Figures

Slashed Zero

Old-style Figures

Lining Figures

Tabular Old-style Figures

Tabular Lining Figures

Fractions

⅓

⅔

⅕

⅖

⅗

⅘

⅙

⅚

⅐

⅛

⅜

⅝

⅞

⅑

⅒

Standard Ligatures

ffi

ffl

Discretionary Ligatures

ffb

ffh

ffj

ffk

fft

fï

ſb

ſh

ſi

ſï

ſj

ſk

ſl

ſſ

ſſb

ſſh

ſſi

ſſj

ſſk

ſſl

ſſt

ſs

ſt

Historical Ligatures

ſb

ſh

ſi

ſï

ſj

ſk

ſl

ſſ

ſſb

ſſh

ſſi

ſſj

ſſk

ſſl

ſſt

ſs

ſt

Punctuations

;

…

•

⁂

–

—

－

₍

₎

(

)

{

}

[

]

‚

„

“

”

‘

’

‹

›

Symbols

♩

♪

♫

♬

♭

♮

♯

♠

♣

♥

♦

℗

™

†

‡

℮

№

€

₣

₩

฿

−

≠

≥

≤

≈

∅

∞

∫

∏

∑

√

∂

‰

↑

↗

→

↘

↓

↙

←

↖

↔

↕

➤

◊

Cyrillic Uppercase

Cyrillic Lowercase

Bulgarian Localized

Serbian Localized

Greek Uppercase

Greek Lowercase

Small Caps Latin

ắ

ằ

ẵ

ấ

ầ

ẫ

ḅ

ḍ

ế

ề

ễ

ẽ

ḥ

ḯ

ḷ

ḿ

ṅ

ṇ

ố

ồ

ỗ

ṓ

ṑ

ṍ

ṣ

ṭ

ẃ

ẅ

ẁ

ỳ

ỹ

ẓ

Small Caps Cyrillic

Small Caps Greek

hibana (Sans-serif)

Latin Extended, Cyrillic, Greek Character Coverage

locl Romanian & Moldovan Localized Forms

locl Bulgarian & Serbian Localized Forms

ss02 Stylistic Set Flexibility

dlig Discretionary Ligatures

smcp Small Caps

calt Contextual Alternates For Time