The Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi was born in 1960. He studied at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo from 1979 to 1983, and six years later followed this up with a calligraphy course at the London College of Printing. His first work experience in type design was at Sha-Ken Co., Ltd., a manufacturer of phototypesetting machines, where he was employed from 1983 to 1989. This was followed by three years at Jiyu-Kobo, Ltd. where he designed and digitized the Japanese font Hiragino Mincho for Dainippon Screen Co., Ltd. He also designed the six-weight Latin variation Hiragino Roman. From 1993 to 1997 Kobayashi worked at TypeBank Co., Ltd. where he designed Latin alphabets to accompany all 17 of TypeBank's digital Japanese fonts. From mid-1997 to 2001 Kobayashi worked as a freelance type designer, during which time he has won a number of awards: in the 5th Morisawa International Typeface Competition for Socia Oldstyle (Honourable mention--font not published). in the 1998 U&lc magazine type design competition--for Clifford (Best of Category and Best of Show); in the Kyrillitsa'99 competition--for ITC Japanese Garden; in Linotype's 3rd International Type Design Contest--for Conrad (1st prize); in the Type Directors Club's type design competitions of 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001--for ITC Woodland, ITC Japanese Garden and ITC Silvermoon, FF Clifford, and Linotype Conrad, respectively. Since May 2001 He is the Type Director at Linotype Library GmbH. He recently completed the Optima nova family with the original designer Professor Hermann Zapf.