Picture a 1970s ski boot tag, and you've got the DNA of Onick, a display typeface by Ryoichi Tsunekawa. This font traces its lineage to a piece of vintage Onitsuka Tiger lettering: vertically compressed, with razor-sharp counters and a stencil-like leg on the K that gives it unmistakable character. Tsunekawa, who runs Dharma Type in Nagoya, took this obscure historical artifact and developed it into a full typeface family, honoring that moment in design history while making it work for contemporary projects.

The typeface shines in vintage sports branding, skateboard graphics, sneaker packaging labels, and retro streetwear tags where that compressed, assertive geometry feels entirely natural. Its stencil-influenced construction means it reads with genuine impact even when set tight or scaled down, making it ideal for small-format product details, badges, and athletic wear labels. The technical foundation is thorough: Tsunekawa included alternates, Eastern European diacritics, fractions, superiors and inferiors, plus custom ligatures, all spaced with meticulous precision. Every glyph was thoughtfully drawn rather than retrofitted from an existing source.

Get Onick on Creative Fabrica and add a typeface that captures the spirit of unconventional historical lettering to your toolkit.