Akira Kobayashi (小林 章, born 1960) is a Japanese font designer living in Germany.
He has also served as a judge in several international typeface contests.
He previously worked at 写研 [jp; zh] (Shaken), and later designed the European characters for Hiragino Mincho and AXIS Font.
He is a leading person in designing Western typefaces in Japan, and has co-developed fonts with Hermann Zapf and Adrian Frutiger.
[1] Kobayashi grew up in Japan and has written a Japanese-language book about Western fonts, titled "西文字体" ("Western font").