The Asian Contribution – Calligraphy to Typography

Chinese Calligraphy.

Chinese Calligraphy’s first appearance was believed to be in 1800 to 1200 BCE, in the form of chiaku-wen, or ”bone-and-shell” script. It’s primary use was fortune telling, one could call it a method of communication between the living and the dead, as well as a method of prayer and worship. This form of writing was Pictographic, found incised  on tortoise shells, flat pieces of bone and other forms of natural surfaces.

Chinese Calligraphy is very much like the Egyptian Hieroglyphics, they are a language purely based on visuals. The Chinese sacrificed realism for more abstract designs, thus having a multitude of characters evolve over time to express feelings, actions, colours, sizes and even types. Again, Chinese symbols are Logograms.

Chin-wen bronze script
[Philip B. Meggs, Alston W.Purvis, 2012. Megg’s History of Graphic Design, pg 51 fig. 3-3]

Some thoughts on the matter.

I came across this video some time ago so I felt it would be interesting to show how exactly Chinese characters do in fact, focus more on imagery rather than words.

ShaoLan : Learn to read Chinese with ease.

As you can see from the video by ShaoLan, Chinese Characters were made specifically to play with the human imagination, and create images when looked at rather than text based representations.

Looking into the Typographical side of things.

I wanted to see how Chinese advertisements, be it posters or promotional leaflets and such are designed with modern raster and vector programs.
I stumbled upon a particular illustrator named Jing Zhang. I looked through some of his works and stumbled upon the following piece :

Jing Zhang – Chinese Editorial
Source : http://www.mazakii.com/2011/archives/244
Accessed : [9th October 2013]

What I like about this piece, is that it combines both elements of the Chinese characters and traditional Chinese imagery. The title (left side) takes up a considerable amount of space and creates a main focal point, leaving the rest of the text in a balanced area. The piece was inspired by the traditional Chinese art of paper cutting.

Moving onto the more colourful side, I’ve found these two artworks depicting Chinese poetry but designed with a contemporary style due to the vast array of bright colours. The characters seem to be overlapping each other, as if creating a single character all together to enhance the delivery of a traditional poem.

Chinese Poetry Illustration
Artist : Mirko (unavailable link due to 404, will try to fix)
Source : http://jessicawongart.tumblr.com/
Accessed : [9th October 2013]

Final thoughts

Chinese Calligraphy probably appealed to me a lot more than the prehistoric pictographs, namely because the Chinese felt like it would be more meaningful to have a language solely based on visual based interpretations. Having poetry and literature unfold itself using these character literally tells the story not using letters and words, but through pictures that play upon the imagination.
Chinese characters remain unchanged to this day, still keeping their promise to remain as a visual rather than a verbal, which would make for some interesting typefaces and designs which combine both storytelling and diverse visuals.

References

Philip B. Meggs, Alston W.Purvis, 2012. Megg’s History of Graphic Design

http://www.mazakii.com/2011/archives/244