JY Raj has had a lengthy gestation. The original one was a sans serif adaptation of a slab serif typeface design by Jure Stojan. Raj looked instantly better as a sans serif. After refining it further one lengthy night in 2001, he showed the drafts to Jack Yan, who completed the character sets and finished the kerning. A characterful sans serif, JY Raj pushes the boundaries of what is possible with various geometric shapes, combining legibility and tradition with sharp, unexpected angles.

As with Stojan’s earlier JY Koliba, it possesses a delightful balance, thanks to the designer’s eye for detail and typographic harmony. The name has little to do with the Asian subcontinent: it translates to paradise in Stojan’s mother tongue, Slovenian.