{"id":19957,"date":"2021-12-07T12:20:23","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T04:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=19957"},"modified":"2021-12-11T10:48:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-11T02:48:19","slug":"new-blood-for-font-design-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2021\/12\/new-blood-for-font-design-family\/","title":{"rendered":"New Blood for Font Design Family"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Felicia Lam<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hong Kong computer font designers introduce Cantonese characters in new digital typeface designs, fueling the city\u2019s rise of Cantonese culture.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever wondered where computer fonts like Times New Roman and Arial come from? These commonly used English fonts are produced by font designers using computer software. In the Google Fonts library platform, there are only 12 sets of Chinese typographies or just one per cent of the whole free and open-source font family. The rest are mostly English typography. With increasing interest in Chinese and Cantonese culture in Hong Kong, font designers find demand for traditional Chinese and Cantonese fonts has grown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eddie Yuen Hing-cheong designed Hard Gothic\uff08\u786c\u9ed1\u9ad4\uff09in 1997. He learnt how to draw and design fonts with software himself. It took him four years to finish the typeface as he needed to design 5,000 traditional Chinese digital fonts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Eddie Yuen Hing-cheong, designer of traditional Chinese font Hard Gothic (\u786c\u9ed1\u9ad4), sells his font sets on his website. (Photo courtesy of Eddie Yuen Hing-cheong)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was inspired by Choi Kai-yan, a famous graphic designer. I have become interested and even fallen in love with traditional Chinese character designs. I find that there are so many possibilities for traditional Chinese characters designs,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuen\u2019s traditional Chinese font with bold and straight strokes was put on sale in 2002 for $300 per set. He gave up selling his font design three years later because of his busy work as a door plate manufacturer to maintain his living. He only sold 40 sets of fonts making a few thousand dollars in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Comics by DDED, a local comic artist who uses Eddie Yuen Hing-cheong’s font design. (Photo courtesy of DDED)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI also have to take care of my kids and make a living to take care of my family. I think it is impossible for a full-time font designer in Hong Kong to survive,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Yuen decided to revamp his font design after learning that his font design was used by DDED, a local comic artist, in his comic book in 2016. He finished revamping his font design in 2018 and added more traditional Chinese characters to his design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I THINK IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SURVIVE AS A FULL-TIME INDIVIDUAL FONT DESIGNER IN HONG KONG.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI added Cantonese characters like \u300c\u35ce \u300d and \u300c\ud843\udef9\u300din my design to meet stronger demand for fonts for typing Cantonese,\u201d Yuen says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yuen finds adding Cantonese characters to his font design has brought convenience to users who create artworks using computer software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore my revamp, comic artists like DDED had to draw Cantonese characters using illustration software instead of directly typing them out. He now can just type Cantonese characters using the set of fonts that I designed, which is more convenient,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar to Yuen, Roy Chan Ching-hin, owner of Moodmen Font, which is an online shop selling products with artistic character designs, also observes growing demand for traditional Chinese font sets with Cantonese words in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Roy Chan Ching-hin is the owner of Moodmen Font, a store which sells products printed with artistic traditional Chinese character designs. (Photo courtesy of Roy Chan Ching-hin)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

He and his teammates realised that there was a problem of lacking a font for eye-catching titles for media content like YouTube video thumbnails years ago, and they wanted to solve this problem with a new font design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur team did some research on market demand for font design which is used for eye-catching titles. We also asked whether people would like to pay for our design in the research,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the research, the team developed Moodmen Reborn Font\uff08\u601d\u7dd2\u91cd\u751f\u9ad4\uff09, a font design with bold and angular strokes, in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Chan\u2019s team is working on their font design which will be launched in early 2022. (Photo courtesy of Roy Chan Ching-hin)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

With the new design, the team believes that this can help promote font design in Hong Kong. \u201cWe want more people to know that there is font design in Hong Kong, and we hope that they will pay for the use of official font designs. We also hope more will join our industry,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chan designed the characters for Moodmen Reborn Font with distinctive elements to serve the need for eye-catching titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor each character, the upper part was designed to be narrower than the lower part so that its shape is similar to a trapezium. Also, I tried to leave more space between strokes so that the characters will not mash up when they are printed in small font sizes,\u201d Chan explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“WE WANT MORE PEOPLE TO KNOW THAT THERE IS FONT DESIGN IN HONG KONG, AND WE HOPE THAT THEY WILL PAY FOR THE USE OF OFFICIAL FONT DESIGNS.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur team has been producing products with artistic traditional Chinese characters designs for more than two years. We can work out a set of font design which is different from typical designs and promote the beauty of traditional Chinese characters with it,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chan also included Cantonese characters like\u300c\u4fc2\u300d in his design as he believes that it is part of Hong Kong culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Products like calendars, phone cases and postcard are sold in Chan\u2019s store. (Photo courtesy of Roy Chan Ching-hin)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am a Hongkonger and I speak Cantonese every day. I do not have to think whether I should include Cantonese characters in my typography as it is natural for me to do so,\u201d Chan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kwok Bit-chee, associate professor of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature and director of the Research Centre of Cantonese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, observes more people have become interested in Cantonese and traditional Chinese characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Kwok Bit-chee, associate professor of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature and Director of the Research Centre of Cantonese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, believes Cantonese font designs can help promote Traditional Chinese culture. (Photo courtesy of Information Services Office, CUHK)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople used to think there is no need to preserve Cantonese as it is already part of our lives. But now more people are concerned about this because of the social environment in recent years,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scholar finds that there is a stronger interest in researching Cantonese and traditional Chinese characters in the academic circle in recent years as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany research projects by postgraduate students in our faculty are about Cantonese. Our ex-colleague, Ben Sir, is also working on preserving Cantonese culture via his social media page and media exposure,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kwok believes that the growing interest in Cantonese font designs can help promote Cantonese culture in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTraditional Chinese characters are commonly used by publications in regions like Hong Kong and Taiwan. People love traditional Chinese font designs especially when Cantonese are included,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Mandy Yim
Sub-edited by Coco Zhang and Charlie Yip<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hong Kong computer font designers introduce Cantonese characters in new digital typeface designs, fueling the city’s rise of Cantonese culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1856,836],"tags":[1864,1865,1866,1867,1868],"class_list":["post-19957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-161","category-lifestyle","tag-font","tag-fontdesign","tag-type","tag-typeface","tag-typography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19957"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20333,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19957\/revisions\/20333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}