Mariko Takagi is a German-Japanese typographer, author, designer of books, and educator. She acts as an intermediary between the Western and Japanese cultures in general – and between Latin letters and Japanese/Chinese characters in particular. Mariko Takagi spent 6 years in Hong Kong (2010–2016), where she worked as an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. This move from a Latin letter based environment to a bilingual (Latin letters and Chinese characters) gave her new inspirations and insights into culture, language and scripts. In 2016 she published the book “Kanji Graphy”, in which she explores the Japanese writing system in regards to their visual and semantic expressiveness in typography. In April 2017 Takagi moved to Kyoto to continue her work as an Associate Professor and researcher at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto, Japan. "e/moji graphy" (2022), Takagi's most recent publication, addresses the often incorrect positioning of kanji as ideograms.