Image of Bandai Sports’ sign via Noramoji.

Today’s funk link is Noramoji, a new design project to preserve store-front fonts in Japan. Johnny writes on Spoon & Tamago‘s coverage of the project,

These Japanese fonts won’t be found in textbooks or typography journals. You have to go looking for them on the streets of Japan: your local barber, an old florist, or an outdated toy shop. Finding beauty in these unsophisticated yet nostalgically charming fonts, 3 friends set out on a hunt to capture, fontify, and give something back to the community.

The images are used to create a font, which can be downloaded from the Noramoji website. All proceeds from fonts go back to the shop owners.

On the Noramoji site, you can watch a video about the project here (some English subtitles) and type your own text into the storefronts on here; the project collects fonts in the #noramoji twitter stream and uploads them to their site.