Setsuko finds its origins on the ancient Silk Road, a network of trade routes crossing the continent of Asia, named for the Chinese silk trade which began in the Han Dynasty more than two thousand years ago.

Originally designed to brand and package products celebrating the charm and mystery of the Ancient East, the characters in Setsuko are intended to express admiration and respect, not the stereotyping and parody sometimes evident in fonts with a particular “foreign” flavor. Rather than trying to twist pictograms into Latin letterforms or effecting a recognizable but trite idiom, I chose a more ambiguous stylization, hoping to leave room for a designer’s creativity and interpretation.