East-West/West-East

PART I: East-Asian Typography Atlas

A Graphic Design MFA Thesis about East-Asian & Latin Typography

Language is a human’s self-disciplined tool.

PART I: EAST-ASIAN TYPOGRAPHY ATLAS

Part I: East-Asian Typography Atlas is a fundamental reference book for graphic designers who seek to learn East-Asian typography, potentially helping work with Latin typography.

This book is an editorial design from Yi Mao’s Graphic Design MFA thesis project, East-West/ West-East. It is intended to fully reveal his research, designs, and explorations. It is designed under the guidance of ArtCenter College of Design MFA thesis process.

The book consists two parts, which are Part I: East-Asian Typography Atlas and Part II: Thesis Process. It is made possible by major support from Sean Adams, Gerardo Herrera, Samantha Fleming, Kjell Van Sice, Theresa Liu, and Constantin Chopin who instruct Yi Mao’s thesis and independent study. It is made possible by his MFA-mates, Andrew Bernard, Angad Singh, Brain Ostroff, Camilla Golestaneh, Gil Barel, Guocheng Xin, Hampton Dunlap, Hanyue Ru, Hsin Pin Tsai, Jun Lin, Ke Wang, Kizzy Memani, Leon Rodriguez, Shiang Jye Yang, Sidd Saigal, Simin Qian, Victoria Apacible, Vincent Than, Xiaocha Zhang, Xingchuan Ma, Xiaodan Liu, Yanchi Hwang, Yilin Miao, Yu Chen, Yuedi Lyu, Zixi Shen, and Yicen Liu. Printed by Cantu Graphics Binded by Kater Craft Designer: Yi Mao Instructor: Sean Adams Gerardo Herrera Samantha Fleming Kjell Van Sice Constantin Chopin First Edition ©2020 Yi Mao All rights reserved under pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

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1.

Introduction

Original Intention

Essay

03 05 08

2.

The Formation of East-Asian Characters

Chinese Language

Korean Language

Korean Syllables

Japanese Language

The Formation

23 24 29 36 39 44

3.

The Anatomy of East-Asian Typefaces

The Terminology

The Classification

Cultural Correlations

53 54 76 82

4.

Working & Pairings with Latin Typefaces Working Procedures Comparison Typesetting Unity Contrast

105 106 108 110 114 120

5.

East-Asian Typefaces Recommendations

Chinese Typefaces

Korean Typefaces

Japanese Typefaces

143 145 185 225

6.

Appendix

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Typography Atlas

Chapter 2

THE FORMATION OF EAST-ASIAN CHARACTERS

CHINESE

Logogram

丶㇐丨丿㇏㇀㇖亅㇂ ㇕㇆㇗㇇㇛㇡㇠㇉㇁ ㇊㇋㇌㇜㇙㇞㇎㇍㆑ ...

KOREAN

JAPANESE

Language name

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Phonogram (Hangul) and Logogram (Hanja)

Logogram (Kanji) and Phonogram (Hiragana & Katakana)

Types of writing system

ㄱㄲㄴㄷㄸㄹ ㅁㅂㅃㅅㅆㅇ ㅈㅉㅊㅋㅌㅍ ㅎ ㅏㅐ ...

丶㇐丨丿㇏㇀ フゝ゛ ノミーー っちぃしくのひ ...

Strokes and parts

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Formation

象形

指事

Pictogram

形声

Radical Phonetic

会意

Ideogram

Ideogrammatic Compounds

转注

Derivative Cognate

한글

Kanji

Hanja

ひらがな Hiragana

Types of characters

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Rebus

한자

Hangul

漢字

假借

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南去经三国 东来过五湖

カタカナ Katakana

훈민정음 訓民正音

国境の長 いトンネル を抜ける と雪国で あった。

Examples

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Typography Atlas

Chapter 3

THE TERMINOLOGY OF EAST-ASIAN CHARACTERS

東서

2. character margin size

1. type size (character size)

1. type size (character size) / 字号 / 폰트 사이즈 / フォントサイズ It is a reference to the numbering system of lead type (metal type) sizes used by printing presses during the late 19th and early 20th century.

2. character margin size / 边距 It refers to the space between the face frame and body frame. (see “face frame” and “body frame” in the next page)

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3. character spacing

3. character spacing / 字距 Character spacing is measured between two characters' body frames. Character spacing generally refers to the spacing among all characters in a set and should not be confused with the Western typographic concept of kerning.

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Anatomy

西东 6. face frame

4. character body frame

5. character body

4. body frame / 字身框 The frame of character body area

6. face frame / 字面框 The frame of the face area

5. character body / 字身 The character body specifies the outer area of a glyph. In movable type, it is bounding area (shoulder) needed for the glyph to protrude from the block of type-metal. The Chinese character body is often square despite some exceptions. In digital typesetting, it is used to set the spacing and sizing of the type.

7. face / 字面 The character face specifies an inner bounding area within a glyph, and it is usually smaller than the area of the character body. Historically, it contains the printed part of the glyph (face) in lead type. Character faces can be further categorized into geometric shapes such as square, circle, diamond, and triangle.

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7. face

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Typography Atlas

Chapter 3

7. Gothic / Hei / SansSerif / Dotum / 黑体 / ゴシ ック体 / 돋움 고딕체

8. Round Gothic / Round Sans / Yuanti / 圆体 / 丸ゴ シック / 굴림체

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.

Round sans has rounded ends and corners to the lines of the characters. In some cases, short protruding stroke ends at intersections are eliminated to make glyphs look rounder. This is the style of typeface used for Japanese road signs.

In 1993, the Republic of Korea (South Korea) Ministry of Culture, in an attempt to standardize typographic terms, recommended the use of Dotum (돋움 dotum) as the proper names for this typeface styles.

The strokes have no contrast between the thicks and thins. The letter shapes are highly influenced by perfectly geometric lines and circles.

“Flat terminals” are a type of stroke ending characterized by a rectangular or nearly rectangular end. Flat terminals are mostly found in Hei/Gothic style typefaces.

Round Gothic's strokes end with a rounded end.

The rounded end is called “rounded terminal”.

since 1900s

since 1900s

永東 永東 동해 동해

がな がな

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Anatomy

9. *Display / Decorative / 创意 体、装饰体 / ディスプレイ書体、装 飾体 / 장식체

永東 This is the largest category and also the most diverse. Rarely used for lengthy blocks of text, decorative typefaces are popular for signage, headlines and similar situations were a strong typographic statement is desired.

*“Display/Decorative” category is an additional one after a series of research of East-Asian type foundries and informational website. There is no scholastic records showing this category is widely recognized by those who regularly practice East-Asian typography, whereas many designers and typographers have recognize “Kai”, “Ming/Song”, “Fang Song”, “Gothic”, and “Round Gothic” as main categories. However, it might be regretful to neglect this big category based on its numerous variety of typographic styles.

동해 Numerous typefaces from this category are strongly correlated with food and drink culture, being a critical expressive method in the consumerist society.

がな They frequently reflect an aspect of culture—such as tattoos or graffiti—or evoke a particular state of mind, time period or theme. Many of them are time-sensitive and may fall out of fashion.

*since 1950s

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Typography Atlas

Chapter 4

UNITY

天地玄黄，宇宙洪荒。 The sky was black and earth yellow; space and time vast, limitless.

Chinese typeface: Source Han Serif regular 45pt/54 pt Latin typeface: Lyon Text regular 25pt/30pt

1. Source Han Serif’s terminal has a similar triangular shape with Lyon Text’s serif. Lyon's brackets has a diagonal ending which almost the same as Source Han Serif's stroke tip. *All the captions typefaces in this book are using Source Han Serif pairing with Lyon Text.

Once as kids, many of us have played the games like Tile-matching. To find and match similar elements to win the game internally share commons with pairing typefaces among different languages. Seeking to find unity while pairing bilingual or multilingual typefaces is seeing characters and letters more as individual graphics.

The similarity among characters' details such as stroke starters/tips, serifs, and stroke terminals are key parts to archive the unity.1 It is common to consider pairing a Latin serif typeface with Ming typeface (Mincho/ Myeongjo) as they tend to be more classical than sans-serifs with details adding to strokes.

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Pairings

てんちげんこう、 うちゅうこうこう The sky was black and earth yellow; space and time vast, limitless.

Japanese typeface: Hiragino Mincho ProN W3 29pt/34 pt Latin typeface: Baskerville MT Std regular 26pt/30pt

2. Hiragino Mincho W3's stroke contrast between the tip and terminal is close to the thick-and-thin contrast on Baskerville regular.

Rather than focusing on character details too much, stepping back and looking through the overall sentences will lead to another approach of pairings. It is finding the contrast among strokes (thick-n-thin contrast).2 The degree of contrast between the thickest stroke width and the thinnest one among various typefaces should match closely. It should not be mathematically the same, but optically felt aligned.

The semblable density on stroke thickness and type weight can also help unify typefaces from different

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Chapter 4

CONTRAST

天地玄黄，宇宙洪荒。 The sky was black and earth yellow; space and time vast, limitless.

Chinese typeface: Source Han Serif regular 42pt/50 pt Latin typeface: Lausanne 400 22pt/26pt

1. Source Han Serif’s pairing with Lausanne unify each other through negative space. But in themselves, one is a Chinese Ming typeface and one is a Latin sans-serif.

Benefiting from the Reversal technique, to think the opposite side of the “unity” and “contrast” become the answer. Pairing East-Asian typefaces with Latin typefaces through contrast may create unexpected outcomes.

By saying “contrast”, it can refer to pair a Ming/Mincho/ Myeongjo typeface with a Latin sans-serif typeface. The contrast is created through stroke details such as terminals, and serifs. It can also refer to the contrast on type weights, such as ”bold vs. regular” or ”medium vs. light”. However, after creating contrast on characters first, the essence of pairing through contrast is to unify an even negative space or achieve asymmetrical balance. As the ”Figure/Ground” perception theory states, a ”figure/ground” organization is a type of perceptual grouping that is a vital necessity for 120

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Pairings

てんちげんこう、うちゅうこうこう The sky was black and earth yellow; space and time vast, limitless.

Japanese typeface: Source Han Sans JP bold 26pt/31 pt Latin typeface: Lyon Text regular 23pt/26pt

2. The bold Kana characters against white gives a stronger contrast than the regular Latin serif against white; therefore, a smaller amount of bold characters is needed to visually balance a larger amount of regular weight letters.

recognizing objects through vision. In Gestalt psychology it is known as identifying a figure from the background. For example, words on a printed paper are seen as the ”figure,” and the white sheet as the “background”. If your brain tell you the negative space look evenly, then the figures will feel balanced.1 To create asymmetrical balance, in this case balance is achieved with dissimilar objects or elements that have equal visual weights or equal eye attraction. One element that attracts our attention is value difference, a contrast of light and dark. As the above shows, the bold Kana characters against white gives a stronger contrast than the regular Latin serif against white; therefore, a smaller amount of bold characters is needed to visually balance a larger amount of regular weight letters.2 West

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Recommendations

Source Han Serif Simplified/Traditional Chinese Category: Chinese Typography, Song Style Year: 1989 Foundry: The Adobe Originals Designer: Frank Grießhammer, Ryoko Nishizuka西塚涼子, Wenlong Zhang张文龙, Yejin We위예진, Soohyun Park박수현 Weights: ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, Bold, Heavy Application: primarily body text and partially display text Source Han Serif is the serif-style typeface family companion to Source Han Sans. The Chinese glyphs, both simplified and traditional, were designed by partner type foundry Changzhou SinoType. The Simplified Chinese fonts support the GB 18030 standard, along with China’s list of 8,105 hanzi. The Traditional Chinese fonts support the Big 5 standard, and glyph shapes adhere to the Taiwan Ministry of Education standard.

南去经三国 东来过五湖 東方文字傳情之美 永東國鬱三力今書鷹 袋 这句话后来演变成“饮水思源”这个成语，意为 喝水的时候想一想流水的源头，比喻不忘本。

六书是汉字组字的基本原理，在周礼中就有提到了六书，只是没有说明具体 内容。到了东汉，许慎在《说文解字》中，详细阐述了“六书”这个汉字构造原 理：象形、指事、会意、形声、转注、假借。 汉字又称中文字、华文字、唐话字，是汉字文化圈广泛使用的一种文字，为世界上独有的一种指示会意文字体系，也是世界上唯一仍被广泛使用并高度发展的语素文字，由中国上古 时代的汉族先民所发明创制，其字体也历经过长久改进及演变。当前确切历史，可追溯至约公元前1300年商朝的甲骨文、籀文、金文，再到春秋战国与秦朝的籀文、小篆，发展至汉

朝隶变，产生隶书、草书以及楷书（以及派生的行书），至唐代楷化为今日所用的手写字体标准——正楷，也是今日普遍使用的现代汉字。汉字在古文中只称“字”，为与少数民族文字 区别而称“汉字”，指汉人使用的文字，后者称法在近代才开始通用。

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Recommendations

Source Han Serif Korean Category: Korean Typography, Black(sans-serif) Style Year: 2017 Foundry: The Adobe Originals & Google Designer: Frank Grießhammer, Ryoko Nishizuka西塚涼子, Wenlong Zhang张文龙, Yejin We위예진, Soohyun Park박수현 Weights: ExtraLight, Light, Normal, Regular, Medium, Bold, Heavy Application: body text and display text Source Han Serif is the second Pan-CJK typeface family from Adobe Type, and the serif counterpart to Source Han Sans, both of which we released in response to a need for a unified typeface design to serve the 1.5 billion people in East Asia.

Source Han Serif supports four different East Asian languages — Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean — and the 65,535 glyphs in each of its seven weights are designed to work together with a consistent design that emphasizes shared elements between the languages while honoring the diversity of each. Also included is a rich set of Western glyphs supporting the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts, which were derived from Source Serif.

훈민정음 별을 노래하는 마음으로 모든 죽어가는 것을 사랑해야지

동해 물과 백두산이 마르고 닳도록 하느님이 보우하사 우리나라 만세. 글자란 사상이나 뜻을 전달하는 도구입니다. 그러므로 읽는 사람이 피로감 을 느끼지 않게 글자가 디자인되어야 합니다.

한글은 발음기관과 하늘, 땅, 사람을 본따 고안된 음소문자로, 닿소리 14자에 홀소리 10자 총 24자로 구성되어 있다. “나랏말이 중국과 달라” 문제를 느 낀 세종대왕이 한국어를 표기하기 위하여 1443년 창제, 1446년 반포하였다. 낱자가 음가만 표기하기 때문에 갈래로는 음소문자에 속하나, 네모 칸에 초성, 중성, 종성을 이루는 자모음을 한데 모아 쓰는 방식 때문에 음절문자의 특성도 지닌다. 원래 글자 수는 닿소리 17자에 홀소리 11자 총 28자였으 나 이후 4자가 소실, 24자만 쓰이게 되었다. 대한민국과 조선민주주의인민공화국과 옌볜 조선족 자치주에서는 공용 문자로, 인도네시아 부톤 섬에서는 찌아찌아어의 보조 문자로 채택되었다. 조선민주주의인민공화국에서는 조선글(朝鮮契)이라 한다.

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Recommendations

Source Han Serif Japanese Category: Japanese Typography, Song Style Year: 1989 Foundry: The Adobe Originals Designer: Frank Grießhammer, Ryoko Nishizuka西塚涼子, Wenlong Zhang张文龙, Yejin We위예진, Soohyun Park박수현 Weights: ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, Bold, Heavy Application: primarily body text and partially display text Source Han Serif is the second Pan-CJK typeface family from Adobe Type, and the serif counterpart to Source Han Sans, both of which we released in response to a need for a unified typeface design to serve the 1.5 billion people in East Asia. Source Han Serif supports four different East Asian languages—Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean—and the 65,535 glyphs in each of its seven weights are designed to work together with a consistent design that emphasizes shared elements between the languages while honoring the diversity of each. Also included is a rich set of Western glyphs supporting the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts, which were derived from Source Serif.

国境の長いトンネ ルを抜けると雪国 であった。

夜の底が白くなった。信 号所に汽車が止まった。 デジタル文字は美しく進化する

新しい時代のこころを映すタイプフェイスデザイン 現代の日本語では、主に以下の3種類の文字体系が用いられる。 漢字： 中国を起源とする表語文字である。国字と呼ばれる日本で造られた漢字も追 加されている。 平仮名（ひらがな）：漢字の草書体より日本で作られた表音文字（音節文字）である。片仮名（カタカナ）：漢字の一部を省略表記して 日本で作られた表音文字（音節文字）である。

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