East Asian typography

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East Asian typography is the application of typography to the writing systems used for the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages. Scripts represented in East Asian typography include Chinese characters, kana, and hangul.

Contents

History

The Jikji (1377), the earliest known book printed using movable metal type - Bibliotheque nationale de France Jikji pages.jpg
The Jikji (1377), the earliest known book printed using movable metal type  Bibliothèque nationale de France

Typesetting with movable type was invented in China during the Song dynasty by Bi Sheng (990–1051). His system used ceramic materials; clay type printing continued to be practiced in China until the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Wang Zhen (1290–1333) was one of the pioneers of wood type. Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore the character faces down and the types could be replaced only by carving new pieces. [1]

Metal movable type was first invented in Korea c.1230 during the Goryeo period (918–1392). Hua Sui (1439–1513) introduced bronze type printing to China in 1490. The diffusion of both movable-type systems was limited and the technology did not spread beyond East and Central Asia, however. [2]

A revolving type case for wooden type in China, an illustration shown in a book published in 1313 by Wang Zhen Chinese movable type 1313-ce.png
A revolving type case for wooden type in China, an illustration shown in a book published in 1313 by Wang Zhen

Before the 19th century, woodblock printing was favored over movable type to print East Asian text, because movable type required reusable types for thousands of Chinese characters. [3] During the Ming dynasty, Ming typefaces were developed with straight and angular strokes, which made them easier to carve from woodblocks than calligraphic forms such as regular script. [4]

Movable type for Chinese characters was popularized in the mid-19th century by American missionary William Gamble, who led the American Presbyterian Mission Press (APMP) in Ningbo and Shanghai from 1858 to 1869. Gamble developed an electrotyping process to reproduce Chinese character types. This method produced characters that were clearer and more closely resembled calligraphic glyphs, and it allowed the types to be made in smaller sizes without reducing quality. [5] [6] In 1869, on his way back to the United States, Gamble stopped over in Japan, where he introduced the electrotype method to Motogi Shōzō  [ ja ]. [7] In 1873, Motogi established Tsukiji Type Foundry, the first type foundry in Japan. [3] [ better source needed ] Japanese type foundries invented Gothic typefaces inspired by Latin sans-serif fonts, as well as variations of the Ming typeface. Japanese typefaces influenced type design across China and Japan. [4] Also, the emergence of newspapers in the 19th century made movable type a worthwhile investment. [3]

Following the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, type designers in mainland China aimed to break free from Japanese stylistic influences by creating typefaces that looked more like handwritten Chinese. [4] Starting in the 1960s, the state-owned Shanghai Printing Technology and Research Institute (SPTRI) developed new typefaces for simplified characters in the four primary type families: Fangsong (or "Imitation Song"), sans-serif Gothic, Ming, and Kaiti. Of these typeface families, the PRC government favored Gothic typefaces because they were plain and "represented a break with the past". The SPTRI was subsequently privatized in the 1990s. [7] [ better source needed ]

Type families

Ming

The characters Ming Zhao Ti  'Ming dynasty form' set in the Zen Antique font Zen Antique sample.svg
The characters 明朝体 'Ming dynasty form' set in the Zen Antique font

Ming typefaces (Mincho in Japanese; also known as Song when used with simplified Chinese [8] ) are characterized by contrasting vertical and horizontal strokes. Small triangles called uroko ( 'fish scales') are nestled into the stroke, and are analogous to serifs in Latin script type.

Gothic

Round sans style typeface Yuanti.gif
Round sans style typeface

East Asian Gothic typeface, known as heiti ('black form') in Chinese, are sans-serif typefaces used with East Asian scripts. They can be further divided into two main types: round sans fonts have rounded ends, while square sans fonts have square ends. [9]

Fangsong

Fangsong (or "Imitation Song") is a style modeled after that used in Lin'an during the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279). Fangsong is a class of regular script typeface, and the standard used in official documents produced by the Chinese government, [10] and civil drawings in both China and Taiwan.

Kaiti

Kaiti typefaces imitate handwritten regular script, as opposed to printed regular script.

Typographic conventions

Symbols

Japanese has a set of characteristic punctuation marks; see List of Japanese typographic symbols for more details. [11]

Instead of underlines or cursive, Chinese, Japanese and Korean use emphasis marks.

Ruby text

Ruby characters are small, annotative glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of Chinese characters to indicate their pronunciation.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typography</span> Art of arranging type

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spacing, and spaces between pairs of letters. The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sans-serif</span> Typeface classification for letterforms without serifs

In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism. For the purposes of type classification, sans-serif designs are usually divided into these major groups: § Grotesque, § Neo-grotesque, § Geometric, § Humanist, and § Other or mixed.

In typography, a serif is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface, and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif. Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" or "Gothic" and serif typefaces as "roman".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typeface</span> Set of characters that share common design features

A typeface is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size, weight, slope, width, and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regular script</span> Style for writing Chinese characters

The regular script is the newest of the major Chinese script styles, emerging during the Three Kingdoms period c. 230 CE, and stylistically mature by the 7th century. It is the most common style used in modern text. In its traditional form it is the third-most common in publishing after the Ming and Gothic types used exclusively in print.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gothic script</span> Topics referred to by the same term

Gothic script, typeface, letters, text or font may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matrix (printing)</span> Mould used to cast letter blocks (sorts) used in printing

In the manufacture of metal type used in letterpress printing, a matrix is the mould used to cast a letter, known as a sort. Matrices for printing types were made of copper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Asian Gothic typeface</span> Font design for CJK characters

In the East Asian writing system, gothic typefaces are a type style characterized by strokes of even thickness and lack of decorations akin to sans serif styles in Western typography. It is the second most commonly used style in East Asian typography, after Ming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ming typefaces</span> Category of typefaces

Ming or Song is a category of typefaces used to display Chinese characters, which are used in the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. They are currently the most common style of type in print for Chinese and Japanese. For Japanese text, they are commonly called Mincho typefaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Western typography</span>

Modern typographers view typography as a craft with a very long history tracing its origins back to the first punches and dies used to make seals and coinage currency in ancient times. The basic elements of typography are at least as old as civilization and the earliest writing systems—a series of key developments that were eventually drawn together into one systematic craft. While woodblock printing and movable type had precedents in East Asia, typography in the Western world developed after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. The initial spread of printing throughout Germany and Italy led to the enduring legacy and continued use of blackletter, roman, and italic types.

In typography, the Vox-ATypI classification makes it possible to classify typefaces into general classes. Devised by Maximilien Vox in 1954, it was adopted in 1962 by the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) and in 1967 as a British Standard, as British Standards Classification of Typefaces, which is a very basic interpretation and adaptation/modification of the earlier Vox-ATypI classification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malgun Gothic</span> Korean typeface

Malgun Gothic is a Korean sans-serif typeface developed by Sandoll Communications, with hinting by Monotype Imaging, as a replacement of Dotum and Gulim as the default system font for the Korean language. It was first shipped with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, being available to download later for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users. The name "malgun" means "clear" in Korean, thus making a direct translation of the font's name "Clear Gothic."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft YaHei</span> Sans-serif typeface

Microsoft YaHei is a sans-serif gothic typeface created by Founder Electronics and Monotype Corporation under commission from Microsoft. Hinting for the font was undertaken by Monotype Imaging. The CJK ideographic characters were designed by the Founder Electronics foundry's senior designer, Li Qi (齐立).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bauhaus (typeface)</span> Geometric sans-serif typeface

The Bauhaus typeface design is based on Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental Universal typeface and the Bauhaus aesthetic overall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Source Sans</span> Sans-serif typeface family

Source Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by Paul D. Hunt, released by Adobe in 2012. It is the first open-source font family from Adobe, distributed under the SIL Open Font License.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Source Han Sans</span> Open-source sans-serif CJK typeface

Source Han Sans is a sans-serif gothic typeface family created by Adobe and Google. It is also released by Google under the Noto fonts project as Noto Sans CJK. The family includes seven weights, and supports Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean. It also includes Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters from the Source Sans family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Source Han Serif</span> Open-source serif CJK typeface

Source Han Serif is a serif Song/Ming typeface created by Adobe and Google.

A duospaced font is a fixed-width font whose letters and characters occupy either of two integer multiples of a specified, fixed horizontal space. Traditionally, this means either a single or double character width, although the term has also been applied to fonts using fixed character widths with another simple ratio between them.

References

Citations

  1. Tsien & Needham (1985), pp. 201–217.
  2. Ch'on (1993), p. 19.
  3. 1 2 3 Rigaud, Émilie (2 March 2022), "Japanese Typography: Wood to Metal to Light to Vectors", Pangram Pangram Foundry, retrieved 29 August 2022
  4. 1 2 3 Liu (2022).
  5. Norman, Jeremy M. (23 February 2023), "Missionary Printer William Gamble Introduces Electrotyping to Chinese Printing Type Production", HistoryofInformation.com, retrieved 10 March 2023
  6. "Biographical Index of Missionaries — China", Presbyterian Heritage Center, 2015, retrieved 10 March 2023
  7. 1 2 Ng, Brian (6 September 2021), "Revolutionary type: Meet the designer decolonizing Chinese fonts", Rest of World, retrieved 17 September 2022
  8. Lunde (2008), pp. 23–25.
  9. "Understanding Japanese Typography", Humble Bunny, 22 August 2011, retrieved 29 August 2022
  10. 党政机关公文格式 GB/T 9704—2012 (PDF) (in Chinese) via Shanghai Jiao Tong University
  11. 日本語資源, nihongoresources.com (in Japanese), retrieved 29 August 2022

Works cited