Chinese character font design: The gas field of Chinese characters

Web page Production WEBJX article introduction: Design font: The spirit and aura of Chinese characters.

The gas field of Chinese characters

Shang (Digidea Lee)

As the saying goes, the word as the person, through a person to write the word to our feelings, from the indirect can see his bearing, for people, this is true. and printing fonts are the same, the difference between different fonts is not just good-looking and bad look, from every detail can see the designer's idea, and the details of the change, even if only a point of distance, will affect the whole word to convey the gas field.

Most people think that Japanese computer fonts are more attractive than China's, which is largely because many of Japan's fonts are more spiritual, while China is more focused on form. If we compare several fonts together, it is easy to see which is more rigid, which is more comfortable. The AXIS blackbody is the best example in the image above, which is the starting point for the design, allowing each stroke to appear in a comfortable position and size, without deliberately wanting to pursue a form. This makes the entire font of the final appearance is natural and concise, not affectation is not exaggerated.

From the left-hand side: Blue Pavilion Black, AXIS blackbody, small Higashitotsuka blackbody, Senze New black, Hua Kang blackbody, Mona Mhei

Entanglement in detail is precisely the focus of typography, because there is so much homogeneity in it that we need to create different things in a fixed pattern and in a framework that differ in nature. Of course, this should first exclude the so-called "personality font" or "artistic font", because they can not be counted as a rigorous printing font (body font).

Take one of my experiments as an example to Song. Although it is a four basic printing font in the form of bold, XXFarEastFont-Arial and italics, imitation is one of the least used, which is related to the bad shape and quality of today's imitation fonts. Let's take a look at the first imitation:

"Yun Wenzi"/"Four" Chinese book Bureau gathers Jane imitation song edition printing

Song was originally made by the two brothers in the Republic of China and Dingshan, whose name is "Poly Zhen Imitation song", the word "Ju zhen" is the meaning of movable type. The font is based on the Song Dynasty edition font, and into the characteristics of EU calligraphy, so that the font style of rigid and soft and economic, with human characteristics, but not without losing the Hale. This is the font I was prepared to restore according to the Zhonghua Book Company magazine Four:

Poly Jean Imitation by Digidea 2008

Poly Jean Imitation Every word is extremely characteristic, the palace out, the tension is very strong, make the whole word of the emphasis is no less than the very thick black body. And when they're together, they don't give the overall effect a discount, and the overall effect is very consistent. Although it has obvious inclination, the center of gravity of the word is still very stable. There is an argument about this design lab in the small, which is roughly saying that this parallel tilt allows the text to leap from the 2D level of the plane to the 3D level, which he calls "vertical upward three-dimensional flight force". I personally think that this "flying force" can increase the active degree of the page, so that the text is not too rigid, like ancient edition or calligraphy works often use some variant words to adjust the reading rhythm.

The imitation of the present, although the details can be seen to retain the original characteristics, but the style has been completely degraded. Poly Jean Imitation Strokes have a significant change in thickness, so although the tip of the stroke has rounded corners, but still can highlight the hardness, and enhance the eye-catching character. And now The imitation, the stroke is approximately the same, the tip is almost all acute angle, should be smooth place has also been straightened, want to highlight the so-called "hard" feeling, like each stroke is a rectangular deformation, is a very low-level way. And the whole word structure is very well, there is no place to be, it appears that there is no Reiki.

Left word: Poly Jean Imitation, right word: xxfareastfont-Imitation

Also noteworthy is that the original poly-Jen imitation has three styles: square, long and flat. In the first period of time, the square and long imitation use of the same frequency; by the 50 's, the basic can only see imitation, more representative of Mao Zedong's poetry, a class of books, most of them with long imitation typesetting. And the computer in The imitation font, said long not long, said Fang, plus the previous mentioned other shortcomings, making this font size small appears fragile, big size will expose quality defects. This is not so much a throwback to Chinese font design as it is a poor product at all. Sadly, almost all imitation fonts now belong to inferior products. So it is no wonder that the use rate of imitation will be so low, and this will lead to manufacturers do not want to do more work on the unpopular fonts, forming a vicious circle.

But The imitation is not perfect, after all, it is the product of the age of the type, parts and stroke style There are some individual differences. And this slanted feature, when placed horizontally, also affects the effect, making the text look untidy. In addition, there are restrictions on the use of old glyphs in China. Therefore, I have tried to improve the imitation, the finished product is as follows:

New Imitation by Digidea 2009

The goal at the time was to reduce the inclination and enhance imitation's sense of calligraphy, which is the humanistic feature, and the unity of stroke style and detail. But now it seems that there are still many obvious deficiencies, or compared with the original imitation may be less than: for example, "point" the curvature of the arc too large to make strokes too small, sharp parts too thin, tilt control is not good for different words appear to be uncoordinated and some words seem to be oblique cut a bit; The palace is not enough to stretch and so on. However, there are some of their own satisfaction, similar to vertical painting, vertical hook, vertical hook at the end, should be handled more comfortable than other fonts.

In addition, during the same period, I also made another attempt to merge imitation with the italics.

The biggest difference between imitation and italics lies in the structure: one is born for printing, so the structure of each word is very standardized, the other is from handwriting and after the evolution of the millennium, although later normalized, but the structure is still a considerable degree of freedom to retain the handwriting. The current computer in the italics font most strokes are more bloated, not very good highlighting the original character of the italics, so I would like to imitation strokes feature set in the structure of the italics, and pay attention to the previous attempt to failure, while the stroke thickness change more strongly, to this to let strokes with a powerful way, Express the feeling of a gas flowing between words, like a thin gold book.

No. No. 03 by Digidea 2009

This design is difficult to say success or failure, if the expression of the character and strength of italics, it should be done. But too much weight contrast, but also caused the font in the smaller size will be dazzling, and will make the printed text appears mottled. But in the big size application, its effect should be OK, so this trade-off is very difficult. Similarly, some English fonts will also be in the same character to prepare multiple fine-tuning the details of the text-oriented, title, and other different uses of the child clan.

In order to study the transition from handwriting to print, I began to pay attention to old song, because it was about how to handle the relationship between print and handwriting correctly, while old song was a turning point in the process of printing. I mean the old song is the birth from the Song Dynasty, has been extended to the Qing Dynasty, a transitional form of the Song Dynasty, which also has the characteristics of both the italics and the song body.

It is easier to find a book that uses this font is the Kangxi Dictionary, although the book is full of controversy, but this does not affect the appreciation of the beauty of words. This is later I made of the Kangxi Dictionary, this is currently online sales:

"typeland Kangxi Dictionary"by Digidea 2010

The beauty of the old song body is difficult to speak, which is similar to a feeling of passing through time and space ... Sorry, this is not a research attitude. The structure of the old song and the current (Neo-Arial) is not much different, but there is one of the most obvious difference is that the old song of the difference is not the thickness of the new song, and the characteristics of the old song strokes have a lot of special place. For example, horizontal painting, the old Song painting of the pen is thicker, and the entire stroke also presents a natural radian, the vertical pen is oblique down, this somewhat similar to the English blackletter type of font characteristics. These are directly retained from the characteristics of the italics and carved, and the new song body is very obvious differences.

Another feature is that the text frame of the old song is slightly special. A frame differs from a structure in that it refers to the combination of parts and strokes within the text, while the frame affects the contour of the outer part of the text. We typically design fonts with two frames in theory: a literal box, literal (literally) contained within it, the dimensions of the literal box vary according to the actual size of the literal, which is understood to be a tightly wrapped literal box; the other is a text frame, which is outside the literal box, The purpose is to leave a space around the text so that each word is not squeezed together, if the metal is used as a metaphor, which is equivalent to the cross-section of the metal block longitudinal placement. The literal text of the general font is not more than the literal box, while the old song is just breaking the law. For example, in the above picture, the "Kang" word left a skim end, beyond the literal box, from the vertical effect can be seen visually, this part is located outside the line.

and similar to this kind of skim processing, in old Song Zheng is a common phenomenon, can also count as one of its characteristics. This, I think, is one of the reasons why old song looks spiritual.