Chinese fonts: A tortuous and fascinating process of creation

There are many things people in the West take for granted, but here’s a big one: [typographic diversity](. For Latin languages, you can find sites that offer [10,000 fonts for $20]( variety for every possible mood, style, and feel. For Chinese, there is no equivalent; it’s just too massive a written language. To create a typeface for English, a designer needs to create symbols for each of the 26 Roman letters in upper and lower case, as well as for punctuation, numbers, and so on. Each of these symbols is called a “glyph.” Each Chinese character is a glyph, too—for instance, æ°´ (that’s shuǐ, which means “water”). The default set for English-language fonts contains about 230 glyphs. A font that covers all of the Latin scripts—over 100 languages plus extra symbols—contains 840. The simplified version of Chinese, used primarily in mainland China, requires nearly 7,000. For traditional Chinese, used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the number is over 13,000. An experienced designer, working alone, can create a new font in under six months that covers dozens of Western languages. For a single Chinese font, it takes a team of several designers at least two years. But thanks to better technologies for the design, display, and transmission of fonts, more and better Chinese fonts are on the way. Increasingly, the world’s hundreds of millions of Chinese-speakers want variety—and companies are working hard to meet demand. 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Brought to you by [Quartz Obsession] Chinese fonts May 22, 2018 Character development --------------------------------------------------------------- There are many things people in the West take for granted, but here’s a big one: [typographic diversity](. For Latin languages, you can find sites that offer [10,000 fonts for $20]( variety for every possible mood, style, and feel. For Chinese, there is no equivalent; it’s just too massive a written language. To create a typeface for English, a designer needs to create symbols for each of the 26 Roman letters in upper and lower case, as well as for punctuation, numbers, and so on. Each of these symbols is called a “glyph.” Each Chinese character is a glyph, too—for instance, æ°´ (that’s shuǐ, which means “water”). The default set for English-language fonts contains about 230 glyphs. A font that covers all of the Latin scripts—over 100 languages plus extra symbols—contains 840. The simplified version of Chinese, used primarily in mainland China, requires nearly 7,000. For traditional Chinese, used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the number is over 13,000. An experienced designer, working alone, can create a new font in under six months that covers dozens of Western languages. For a single Chinese font, it takes a team of several designers at least two years. But thanks to better technologies for the design, display, and transmission of fonts, more and better Chinese fonts are on the way. Increasingly, the world’s hundreds of millions of Chinese-speakers want variety—and companies are working hard to meet demand. 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Reuters/Tyrone Siu By the digits [85,568:]( Number of characters in Zhōnghuá Zìhǎi, one of the most comprehensive Chinese dictionaries [2,000:]( Estimated number of characters needed to understand a typical newspaper [214:]( The standard/conventional number of radicals—components contained within larger characters—that each have their own meaning [57:]( Number of strokes in biang, an intricate Chinese character with a mysterious origin. It might be an onomatopoeia for the sounds the noodles in a popular Shaanxi dish make. (It’s not found in dictionaries.) [25,930,099 NTD (US$865,000):]( Money raised by Taiwanese startup Justfont during a crowdfunding campaign to deliver a new generation of fonts to the web 🐦 [Tweet this]( It took China’s communist government more than 10 years of dedicated work to complete its character simplification scheme, and even now it is not without controversy. For the same reason, there has not been much innovation in fonts ever since. Brought to you by HBO The distinctions between host and human are becoming increasingly blurred in Westworld—and online. --------------------------------------------------------------- A new AI bot developed by Delos is here to discuss your Westworld experience and thoughts about the park.[Tap to chat]( Brief history An evolving form --------------------------------------------------------------- [Shang Dynasty]( 1600 – 1046 BC: The earliest-known Chinese characters are etched onto the shoulder blades of oxen and the under-shells of turtles. Known as “oracle bone” inscriptions, some last to this day. Shang and Zhou Dynasties, 1600 – 256 BC: Characters are inscribed on bronze objects, taking on a different form. [Warring States Period]( 475 – 221 BC: Different scripts are used across the Chinese empire during an era of constant clashing between opposing kingdoms. Qin Dynasty, 221 – 207 BC: Presiding over a newly unified country, the first emperor simplifies and unifies the written language, which will significantly influence modern Chinese. Han Dynasty, 206 BC – 220 AD: Characters evolve under Official Script, the dynasty’s formal written language, transitioning into its modern aesthetic. Southern and Northern Dynasties, 420 – 589 AD: Regular Script, which arises at the end of the Han Dynasty, becomes the dominant convention. It continues to mature stylistically until the early Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD), at which point characters will no longer experience significant developments. 1950s: The government of the People’s Republic of China begins promoting Simplified Chinese, which reduces the number of strokes within characters, in an effort to increase literacy. Simplified becomes the official written language in mainland China and Singapore, while Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan continue to use traditional. Fun fact! You can still make out the characters on the earliest oracle bones, which [date back to the 13th century BC]( around the time of the Trojan War. Explainer Character anatomy --------------------------------------------------------------- The most fundamental unit of a character is the “stroke.” Think of a stroke as a single motion during which the writer does not lift her writing implement. The character for “two” is 二 and, intuitively, contains exactly two strokes. A more complicated character is the traditional form of 灣, the wān in Taiwan, which is made up of 25 strokes. [灣-bw_colorcorrected] These strokes come together to form the 214 “radicals” of Chinese—components contained within larger characters that each have their own meaning. Take “water” (æ°µ) or “fur” (毛) or “speech” (言) as examples. A character is usually one or more radicals, which give it meaning, along with other parts that convey its pronunciation. You might notice that the wān (灣) character mentioned above contains the “water” radical on its left side; that’s because this character means “bay”—which is a very watery thing. Watch this! Picture perfect --------------------------------------------------------------- Contrary to popular belief, Chinese is not just a pictographic language. Only a few of its characters are derived from pictographs and another handful from ideographs—symbols that represent an abstract idea. The vast majority ([roughly 95%]( are logical aggregates or, more often, phonetic complexes as described above. But it’s still fun to see how some of the most fundamental characters evolved from pictures and ideas. take me down this 🐰 hole! Check out [New World Encyclopedia’s guide]( to learn more about the derivations of Chinese characters and dive deeper into their etymology. How it's made The stages of creation --------------------------------------------------------------- The journey of a Chinese font begins with a period of research. At [Justfont]( this phase lasts roughly a year. The goal is to take a fuzzy idea for a hypothetical new typeface and develop it into a set of a few hundred “representative characters.” These set the tone for the thousands of characters to follow. Just as Latin fonts have serif and sans-serif styles, Chinese has Mingti and Heiti. Heiti, like sans-serif, uses clean, straight lines. Mingti, similar to serif, has extra embellishment at the end of strokes. After an initial decision to go in a Heiti or Mingti direction, designers hone the typeface further by looking for inspiration from sources as wide-ranging as calligraphy and ancient lettering to other Chinese and Latin fonts. Underlying all of this thought is the goal of identifying a font-shaped hole in the market. The designers then put pencil to gridded paper, sketching out initial passes at the representative characters. As they tweak the characters, they also pay attention to the look of each individual stroke because they will shape the look of other characters down the line. Over time, the designers expand their representative set of characters to test whether each stroke holds up to the range of contexts they will be used in. Arphic Technology, a Taiwanese font shop and one of the biggest names in Chinese typography, has software that automates collecting the necessary components for a character, but that alone is never enough. Each character must be individually adjusted to achieve the right balance while maintaining the uniform experience of the whole typeface. The designers can finish anywhere between 10 and 100 characters a day, a process that gets faster as the style becomes more concrete. Quotable “The simpler the character, the harder it is to design.” — [Teresa Mou, senior designer at Arphic Technology]( Reuters/Thomas Peter Technology advancements --------------------------------------------------------------- In recent years, several technology improvements have helped Chinese typeface designers meet the rising demand for fonts with personality. Higher screen resolution, for example, has allowed displays to handle the subtler curves and loops of more calligraphic Chinese. Take this in contrast to the early days of computers, when all but the simplest Chinese characters could not be represented accurately or even legibly. There have also been major advancements in the distribution of fonts through the internet, so fonts render properly even when users don’t have them installed on their computer. This has been possible for a number of years, but Chinese always posed a problem, once again, with its scale: Due to the huge number of glyphs, the fonts require large downloads for users that have not visited the site before, putting a strain on bandwidth for both the user and provider. Now Chinese webfont providers cleverly scan through a webpage’s text to identify which glyphs are required and send only those. Reuters/Aly Song Pop quiz The most complex Chinese character in modern dictionaries is nà ng, a 36-stroke character referring to what? A small cricketThe sound your voice makes through a stuffed-up noseA very chatty personThe feeling of being watched Correct. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. The fine print In yesterday’s poll about your favorite [volcano-centric]( guilty-pleasure film, 53% of you voted for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. 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