ESPI on site: Same same, but different at ATypI Hong Kong

First of all: Indulging into Asian type design is a wonderful aesthetic experience.

It reminds us of very much the same tasks we face in Western (type) design, at the same time confronting us with new angles than those we thought we knew before. Not to mention the socio-philosophical implications concerning a totally different way of expressing yourself, if it is with at least 3.000 characters – which you need to read an average Chinese newspaper – compared to dealing with 26 letters.

Can you see the difference? Left: original Chinese calligraphy.
Right: the same characters reshuffled, not in the natural flow of writing.

Tweets in Chinese

ATypI conference in Hong Kong, first day, first impressions: people sitting around me in the audience tweeting in Chinese (Japanese? Korean?) characters. (Yes, Twitter is allowed in Hong Kong, not in Mainland China, as far as I know).

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People also take notes in speedy Chinese, more calligraphy than handwriting, it seems. This is different. And of course it is a difference whether you have to design 26 letters (which makes a minimum of around 230 glyphs per font and weight) or starting with 3.000 characters, open end, which easily leads to “783,792 glyphs in 34 weights” (example by Morisawa, the biggest and best-known Japanese type foundry).

A Japanese font by designer-artist kokin. A figure given by Japanese font foundry Morisawa. The way kokin from Japan approaches the theme black and white artistically.

“There’s no such thing like black and white ... ... in India“.

Professor D. Udyaha Kumar, the only participant from India, ... ... illustrates the colorful attitude of his country towards typography.

A question of structure

It is a special challenge to design characters which consist of only one, two or three strokes, in combination with others which have up to 64 strokes. A very very close look on proportions, stroke spacing, grey value and text density becomes kind of crucial then...

Or is it all just a question of structure? A question of a very structured way of approaching type design, of looking at characters, glyphs, letters, typefaces?

Kenneth Kwok from China impresses the audience with his enthusiastic explanations on “Ideographic type design and production”: a title that seemed not that mind-blowing at the beginning. But Kwok was. In order to illustrate how to maintain consistency and tranquility — even when dealing with characters ranging from very simple to very complex — Chief Designer and Director of Calligraphic Centre compresses his more than 40 years of experience to basic technical principles and methodologies that can be applied to all CJK characters – at least if you have the eyes of Mister Kwok.

Chief Designer Kenneth Kwok ... .. during his awesome presentation ... ... explaining basic design principles ... ... giving examples ... .. giving more and more examples ..

... with a little help of the audience. Chinese italics?

For the first time in its 56 years of existence, ATypI held its annual conference in Asia. The theme of this year’s ATypI conference, the first one in Asia, was “墨 [mò] – between black and white”: Mò – meaning ink – is at the heart of Chinese calligraphy and also an intellectual metaphor. “Know the white and guard the black” (知白守黑) is an expression from Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu “that speaks of a virtuous life as well as an aesthetic sensibility. A Chinese calligrapher aims to achieve equilibrium of black and white not in an absolute sense, but an organic and intuitive balance“ (quoted from ATYpI website).

Combining Chinese and Western type ...

... is not easy. But possible.

“Balancing black and white is a shared value between both Eastern and Western typographic cultures” (ATypiI 2012 introduction). Yes, there are questions that are very much the same in every script or font system. This is also shown by new media expert and experience designer Seung Yoon Lee from Seoul University. Her research on designing marginal spaces in printed books and ebooks could apply equally to texts set in Latin – only that Korean offers additional design possibilities, like being written both horizontally and vertically.

Talking about other possibilities to deal with text, interesting questions arose during the conference: Do CJK fonts (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts) need italic? Or something like italic? Can we even apply our perception of “italic” on Asian typefaces, or would we have to think of completely other ways of highlighting words or bits of text within a text? Well...

Your own private story

Interestingly enough (or am I here caught by just another preconception?): The individual seems to play as important a role in Asian as in “Western” type design. “Your own personal story would have an influence on the fonts you design”, states Sammy Or, one of the most important designers of contemporary Chinese typefaces, in his final keynote on Sunday. Shaobo Li, design consultant for the largest Chinese font foundry and researcher at the Design Department of Fine Arts Academy in Hunan, China) adds that “Chinese Heiti type is influenced by historical, concept, technology – and the individual”. The name “Heiti” (for one of the Chinese scripts) means trust or communication – a nice connotation for the intercultural exchange that took place at ATypI.

In some cases, peoples’ personal background is part of their motivation to indulge into Asian type. Others find their specialization just because “no one else did before“ (at least not at Microsoft), as Aaron Bell explains his interest in Korean font design; same goes for Mary Faber from New Zealand, speaking about the type history of her country: no one else did take note of it before

Titus Nemeth (University of Reading, UK), on “Simplified Arabic” ...

... and the Linotype-Intertype war.

Pragmatic philosophy

So, pragmatic approaches meet more philosophical views at ATypI: “A typeface is defined by its style and its pursuit for the spiritual expression (Nua Jiang, researcher on Chinese modern typography and teacher at the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing). Shaobo Li adds that “a typeface cannot be created all of a sudden by a certain dynasty, it must have a heritage.”

In the end, it is all very simple: “Each culture should find its own solution” (Jaehong Park from Sejong University), in order to create typefaces, that are “harmonious, but not the same.”

Find all ATypI 2012 speakers portrayed and the complete Hong Kong program on the ATypI website.

Warm regards and many thanks to Keith Tam for organizing this wonderful conference – and for letting us know his favourite restaurants and beaches in HongKong.

Love and many thanks to Luc(as) de Groot for taking me to Hong Kong and for contributing to this text.

Photos: Sonja Knecht

The accompanying exhibition at “PolyU”.

Good advice!

A delicate beauty.

A big bold beauty.

Guess what: Ethiopian. Wow.

Love at first sight: Thai script.

Sample of Thai script 2.

Sample of Thai script 3.

Sample of Thai script 4.

Don’t know what it says, but must be important – it’s italic.

Final key note presentation of this year’s ATypI conference, given by Sammy Or, who’s career spans 30 years of typeface design, consultancy, and lecturing on Chinese calligraphy and typography.