Hanzi, as known as the Chinese typography, it is undoubtedly the treasure of Chinese cultures. It is the concentration of Chinese wisdom, it’s shape of rich, exquisite structures and strokes, the depth of artistic conception, the melodious of rhymes, is incomparable to other words. Chinese characters are as well being known as the only ideographic character in the world that has been used for thousands of years and is still in use today. The characters have been an important symbolic system during the Chinese civilisation era and there is a lot of research on the origin and font evolution of Chinese characters till then, and the results are not consistent, but it’s not necessarily for us to be conclusive as an application.
Ever since the end of the Qing Dynasty era, the transformations and developments of Chinese characters had undergone lots of ups and downs as the way of delivering informations has also gone through from engraving printing to lithography and from "The age of lead and fire" to the "era of light and electricity”. Apparently the design of Chinese character fonts has undergone some great transformations and developments throughout as it had eventually influenced the early development of typography on book covers or publications of the new era of China to come out with a series of variations and the atmosphere of the sense of typography in the said era was going strong, it has been playing an important role in the development of graphic design since then.
Chinese characters are way different than Latin and other phonetic characters, due to the large number of Chinese characters, and all the complex strokes that have to be deal with. As from the points above, it eventually makes the design of Chinese character fonts to be said as one of the most annoying yet boring works in the world. However, due to the varieties of visual features from phonetic characters of Chinese characters, the character and font design itself somehow manage to present an unique yet aesthetic feeling in terms of the visual. This has attracted a large number of bookmakers, font designers and graphic designers to take part in it. Throughout the course of history, Chinese characters has also emerged with a lot of classic fonts and design works and eventually becoming an effective tool for the dissemination of knowledge and the visual communication of Chinese context.
Speaking of the development of typography during the New China era which is the era of President Mao’s since 1949, Chinese characters began to simplify reform, as for those active font designers during the Mao’s era were still going firm and still had their strong element of creativeness in the creative field even after all sorts of political reformations and campaigns that were happening in between, It is not surprised that, there were actually many of the fonts that were newly created during the Mao era, Then after the 1990’s, Chinese typography has proudly went through the process of printing age and eventually entering the age of digital information.
There is also a dialectical principle that is hidden in the structure of glyph and the combination of words in Chinese characters which is the symmetrisation of characters, it is an important feature for the constructions of Chinese characters. The Chinese characters that appeared in the Shang Dynasty began to be looked into deeply in terms of the coordination criteria such as symmetry, avoidance and reflection between the characters themselves because these can be reflecting the thoughts of paying attention into a simple dialectical thinking.
Looking at the process of the transformation of Chinese characters, it is more like a “war" that is without smoke, which embodies the process of an era. Although there have been several significant changes in the shape of Chinese characters in history, there are still a considerable number of words in modern times with complex structure and many strokes. On the other hand, the phenomenon of "one word polymorphism" is also particularly serious because of the accumulation of successive dynasties. The so-called "word polymorphism" refers to the same syllable has two or more than two glyphs different Chinese characters can be recorded, and these two or more than two Chinese characters have exactly the same meaning. This is what is commonly said to be "different characters". The present situation of complex structure, many strokes and "one word multi-shape" undoubtedly exacerbates the burden of people to learn and use Chinese characters objectively. Especially since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, this situation has become more prominent. After the founding of New China, the general public became the masters of the country, in the face of the burgeoning socialist transformation and socialist construction movement, they are enthusiastic, eager to learn knowledge and culture, in order to improve the ability to serve the country and society. So, how can the broad masses of the people get rid of the "illiterate" hats as soon as possible? Some insightful calls for textual reform in the first place.
Simplified Chinese characters was the first step in text reform at the time. According to the idea at that time, the reformations of Chinese characters will take the common phonetic direction of the world characters. Nevertheless, the whole simplification exercise was very prudent and rigorous, and did not act hastily because of the idea of "pinyin direction of Chinese character reform". For example, the establishment of a simplified policy, small to a certain word common partial selection, stroke saving and so on, are trying to take care of both the reality, but also the history and the Chinese character itself of the system. The formulation of Chinese character standard standards not only condenses the efforts of experts and scholars, but also permeates the wisdom of ordinary people. The simplification of many words is not the "closed-door" of experts and scholars, they are in fact the crystallization of the wisdom of the people. For example, some simplified forms as Sandi have been circulating in the private for a long time, experts are more often in the collection, analysis and collation of work. On the other hand, the promulgation of normative standards is also subject to strict legal procedures.
However in the digital era today, there has still been a lack of discussions on Chinese typography and its transformations in between compared to especially Latin typography. But recently there has been events and activities about reviewing of Chinese characters that held in Asia and internationally frequently throughout these years, along with Chinese’s typography and lettering books. It’s getting more and more typographical courses and workshops being not only locally held but internationally around the cities. It’s a good starting point in terms of exploring to the discussion of design and cultural identity of Chinese typography.
Chapter 1 :
When it comes to the annual election seasons, the races among candidates have always been aggressive and competitive. Speeches, slogans, and posters are the some of the usual yet important ways for the candidates to communicate and deliver the messages to the voters during the election periods. Speaking of the elections from majorities of the countries, the design community would never be absent as they are to produce a series of approachable designs on banners and posters for the candidates. There have been countless of classic posters that were designed for the election campaigns until today because posters and banners are always being seemed as one of the critical weapons in elections campaigns.
There are no huge differences among the political candidates from all around the world, they will always spend lots of efforts to boost their visibility and exposures towards the society to make their presences felt. Hence, it could not be lesser and surprised that all the propaganda campaign posters would be hanging all over the places and most of them looked similar. As regards the location of posters, the posters and banners are usually being placed on the walls of buildings, roadside, lamp post and other public places else to attract the attentions towards the voters. Somehow, although there might be couples of rules and restrictions on the specifications and the posting of the campaign posters, but there are still freedoms to design the contents of the posters itself. Even though everyone knows their own standing point in mind, but there are still candidates who would be thinking out of the box and extend the freedom and creativity of the poster’s content.
However, do the types actually matters much in the sense of visual impacts on the overall designs of the campaign posters or banners? Actually, it has been playing an important role to present a stronger visual impacts to the audiences and that is what makes the campaign poster stands out among the sea banners as well. Imagine being one of the candidates whose with tight budget on hand, and the scenario goes by – banners have been always specifically designed for the propaganda campaigns on the previous years and they are mostly being showcased along the bridge and sidewalks, competing with the other candidates at the same time, but what if the propaganda above was being banned or restricted in a sudden, is it necessary to make changes on the competition strategy in order to promote yourself and approaching the society? Yes, you could make your ways via digital media platforms and that is what other candidates might have thought of at the same time as well. Hence, being active on the online socializing platform is undoubtedly the quickest way to get close and approach to the society because that is also one of the essential options for all the candidates to stay competitive.”
The most common designs features of a campaign banner that most of the candidates could asked for in terms of promoting their own selves are to create huge banners with eye catching colours and huge font size to shout out their campaign slogans in order that people could notice it and keep their eye on any one of them among the sea of banners that were hung along the bridges or streets.
Usually in a campaign banner, the required text can be broadly divided into four items as in the name of the candidate, the number of the election, the campaign title, and the main slogan of the said campaign such as “your supports make a better society”, “thanks for having us “ and so. Among four of these features, the "name" of the candidates occupies the largest layout on the whole banner, and the usage of the font could be more or less showing the characteristic of the candidate, such as the choice of bold on the font types, perhaps it could be expressing the sense of their novelty, or either for being trendy and new and meanwhile, by using the fonts with calligraphy style, could be meant by the candidates may want to imitate the style of the successor from the past elections and could also mean that their sense of thinking are more into traditional and preservative. From the banners, it’s fairly obvious to notice that most of the candidates are trying to emphasise their names, not only from the enlargement of the font weight, they could go for as bold as it could be to make the wording stands out among all, some of them would also be adding borders in order to make the fonts much more clearer, hoping that their banners could able to be noticed at the first glance by the voters or by-passers.
A set of easy-to-read fonts that allow people to quickly identify often attracts the most attentions. As you could notice that the 1st, 2nd and 5th typeface is visually larger than the rest, three of the choices are actually under the category of sans serif in Chinese type yet the rest are serifs and they are more into traditional calligraphy style.
This is related to the rectangular boxy-shape of the chinese characters, the san-serif’s group of fonts as you could notice, they usually extend the weight of the characters and trying to fill up the strokes as bold as possible, so it eventually looks larger; while the group of fonts with the style of traditional calligraphy are normally more into emphasising the aesthetic and spaces of the strokes on the characters, these sets of fonts are not meant to fill up the weight of the strokes, and that is why they seem relatively small.
A closer look at the first set of words (numbers 1th, 2, 5th), the Black Body (1) is the most conspicuous. In addition to the elongation of each stroke, its single line thickness is close to the same, the white part is very few, the stroke head and the finishing square cut, is the six words of the most easy to know, but also the most weighty font, and thus become a candidate for "name" or " Slogan "the first choice; round body (5) and bold is roughly the same, but the beginning and end of each stroke of the harvest round, perhaps too bold, so it is not as common as black body, as for adding to the line of the writing rhyme, straight thick and thin bodies (2), although with a sense of dignity, but also quite eye-catching, As a result, it is less used for "names" and instead becomes the favorite font for "slogans."
Compared with the first set of words, the second set of words (3rd, 4, 6th) has the effect of strengthening the characteristics of the candidate, the standard italics (3) is the most modest, the line in italics (4) with a flowing breath, but also resort to the image of the handsome gentleman; This is certainly not to say that the candidate who adopts the second set of words is bound to be "the word", but the use of pen-shaped distinctive fonts is indeed more likely to arouse the specific impression of the electorate, in fact, in the past elections in Taiwan, italics are most often used for "name", which is the most popular in the thick "yan italics" and
The reasons of why the candidates normally fancy the first typeface, mainly is because of the heavy weight and the strength of it as it could give a stronger visual impact on their banners, hence they usually would use the font type on the candidate’s name and slogan to make it more conspicuous for the voters to notice them. Compared to the 5th one, due it’s rounded, candidates think that it couldn’t give a stronger visual impact as the first one did, rounded seems a little softer to be used as the first type choice for candidate names, but yet, it became the first type choice for slogans as it gave an visually approachable feeling to the voters.
However, as the campaign platform is more approaching to the network and social media platform in these recent years, not only the selection of types for the propaganda posters are obviously diversified, the candidates are also gradually able to make good use of the characteristics of different types to convey their messages.
For instance, during the stage of final counting down towards the official polling day, the emphasising on campaign numbers of candidates have became the most important part to be concerned, and propaganda’s slogans from different candidates are getting more frequent to be heard through platforms like broadcastings or social medias as it goes like "I am candidate number x, (candidate’s name), please support me by voting number x, let’s do it!”. However, how could the visual appeals be presented to the audiences? Looking back at the propaganda posters and banners of the previous candidates, you could notice that the campaign numbers are often being imitated after the voting stamps, the reasons for such designs probably might be to enhance the presence of the actual scenario of voters voting on the actual polling day. Hence they did not really bother much on the aesthetic of the overall visual on their campaign banners since the number matters much more for them.
Chapter 2
Instead of a messy, over colourful, unorganised-designed banner that barely conveys the core message of candidate’s propaganda slogans or gives a visual impact to the audiences, a modern yet straight forward designs are definitely much more preferable as it’s straight to the point and there are no other necessary noises scattered all over the visual, and yet, that has eventually been a new trend for the recent elections. Throughout these years, the game seemed to be approaching the age of being more concern on the options of valueness, and hoping that voters could support the “new generations of elections” that symbolises transform and innovative by getting rid of the previous traditional old thinking.
Starting off with the campaign banners from one of the Taiwanese election candidates, Mr Ko. The type that was being used in Mr Ko’s campaign in 2014 was a classic example. During that time, Mr Ko’s propaganda shouted the slogan of: “The change of Taiwan, starts from the capital” The change of Taipei, starts from the cultural.”, and it’s clear to notice that the attitude of wanting to change was also being reflected on the types of the propaganda’s banner itself. From the first nine words of the slogan – “改變台灣，從首都開始” (The change of Taiwan, starts from the capital) he has used a thicker yet bolder set of type which is Hua Kang Li type. This is a sharp and straight forward set of bold type, there is no any redundant decorations at the beginning and the end of each strokes on the characters. Along with his name in a handwritten styling on the bottom, apparently the campaign slogan appears to be more into his own signature style.
During Mr Ko’s propaganda campaign on the earlier stage, he hit it off with his slogan "White power” with the contrast of black and white to emphasise the importance of white on his campaign banners. This strong contrast has eventually create a clearer visual impact to the voters as there are no other unnecessary colours and distractions scattered around in terms of the backgrounds or wording itself, because the less choices of colours makes the slogan stands out more and straight to the point enough to deliver the messages to the voters clearly. Such a strong contrast as above, was also seen to be used on the eight word slogan – “群眾募資，計畫啟動” (The kickstart of the crowdfunding plan) in DFMing Traditional Chinese type. The set of font has a huge difference in terms of the vertical and horizontal strokes because it is thicker at start but thinner at the end, this has made the type itself appears to be more eye-catching. It reminds me on one of the Japanese animations – Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is about teens piloting giant robots in order to save the world. They have been using such stronger and tougher looking font type as their typesetting, probably it is to emphasise the meaning of “saving the world”. The usage of the type seems to be similar with the back meaning of Mr Ko’s campaign slogan at some points, as he is also calling to make the nation a better place to live.
Moving on, the word "柯文哲" as the name of the candidate Mr Ko, was presented in Hiragino Kaku Gothic, which the type was introduced by the Japanese Word Tour workshop. In order to increase the humanistic ambience of the type, some details on curvatures and the changes of the strength were added onto it, such as by creating a bell mouth at the beginning of the stroke and the thicker the horizontal stroke is at the beginning, the thinner the stroke would gradually get to the right. Hence, it is not hard to notice that, the details mentioned above applied to most of the bold types in the industry. In addition, it can be noted that there are 10 different weight on this set of type. From the lightest W0 to the heaviest W9, users can apply them according to their needs, such as a heavier and bolder type was being used on the name of the candidate "柯文哲" on the banner in order to not appear to be much lighter when it goes with the DFMing type.
Furthermore, another example of the candidates that could be taken as reference would be Nathan Law’s propaganda campaign for the election in Hong Kong. The campaign slogan from this young candidate shouted :“人已到了, 決至現場”, which meant by “I am right here now and ready for a decisive battle” For these eight characters, he went for the choices of a bold type in smudged white with a mounded details at the end of the strokes, it’s designed for Adobe by the Japanese senior font designer Otsuka Masahiko which has been well recognised by the design community for several years. In fact, by paying attention to the of the mounded edge at the end of the strokes, it actually looks like a side of a triangular shape as well, such details could symbolises the personality of individuality and independent of the candidates himself.
Besides, the chosen font type for the sub header “今日 ——— 投羅冠聰一票” which falls between the slogan was using the same type as the sub header on Mr Ko’s campaign banners which is DFMing font, the strokes of the type appeared to be way more thinner than the bold type that was being used for the slogan since the sub header is not the main attention that has to be seen at the first place, however, in order not to ignore the informations from sub header, a brighter colour such as cyan and white was being applied on the message as you could see the “eight” and “hope” from both “vote eight” and “vote hope” on the bottom was highlighted in cyan, because those were one of the main attentions as well for the voters to notice. Apparently, even the font size is smaller than the slogan, yet both of them could still be seen clearly and being noticed due to the colour selection. Speaking of the colour selections and chosen types, it’s no doubt that the graphic designer did a good job on dealing with the details and sequences of the overall visual, it eventually made a clear contrasts between the slogan and the sub header, also, the combination of both types did goes well together to enhance the cohesiveness of the visual.
Same goes to the second banner, the colour of the slogan appears to be red, along with the white sub header overlapping on few of the characters of the slogan, but due to the well colour combination, the words could still be read and seen clearly without being distracted. Moreover, the number of candidate was not being exaggeratedly emphasise on the banner but still it stands out on the visual, because the tone of the background appeared to be darker, and in between of each red characters of the slogan have sufficient spaces for the number “8” to fit in without looking cramped, so even though the font size of number “8” is smaller than the slogan, but still, it stands out in terms of the colour, as white is striking enough to be noticed at the first place.
Other than that, Nathan came out with another series of interesting campaign posters which were more into graphic style. From both visuals, he emphasised few of the main informations such as 香港岛 (Hong Kong), 羅冠聰 (Nathan’s Chinese name), and the number “eight” in a curvy circle by using a bold rounded type. The type that was being used is fairly similar to the rounded Latin typeface, VAG Rounded Font. One of the main features about this type appears to be it’s arc-shaped at the end of each strokes, making the words look gentle and approachable, but at the same time still looks proper in the visual.
In addition, he approached a much more contrast color than the background to highlight the districts that were involved in his propaganda campaign which is “中西區” (Central and Western District) and “灣仔區” (Wan Chai District) by using Hiragino Sans GB. The design of Hiragino Sans type symbolises young and modern, it has a higher readability on screen as well and always never goes wrong on either both digital media and print media because ever since this typeface was being designed, it has been taken considerations regards of the display needs on digital media from the very beginning of it’s development. In order to avoid any smaller font sizes that could possible be mistaken or lead to unnecessary misunderstood regards on the informations , the details towards the type have been carefully designed and adjusted and hence, it has became one of the mainstream types that is widely favoured by Chinese designers.