However, for a variety of practical, aesthetic, and political reasons, woodblock printing remained the norm for centuries. Printing began with the carving of full pages onto blocks of wood - but artist Bi Sheng, who lived from 990 to 1051 A.D., invented movable type, where each character is carved on its own block that can then be rearranged to a custom order. Wilson LeeĪs any good Chinese student learned in Sunday language school or while living in a Chinese-speaking country, printing is one of China’s four great inventions (alongside paper, gunpowder, and the compass). Type designer Julius Hui’s passion project, Ku Mincho, is an attempt to radically rethink Chinese fonts. “I want my type foundry to be one that spreads this, so that it’s clearer for everyone what Chinese culture’s roots are.” “I think all typefaces should have a ‘traditional Chinese feel,’” Hui said. His research and dedication to the history of Chinese typography is, improbably, a revolutionary act. He intends to take it back to its roots before the influence of Japanese designers, and to free it from the cultural gravity of the mainland, where even typefaces come under the purview of the state. Hui said that the point of the project is not just an exercise in aesthetics, but an attempt to “decolonize” Chinese type. To create it, Hui enlisted two of his former colleagues, Kin Cheung and Sammy Fung, who each have more than 30 years of experience in Chinese type design.
Ku Mincho is a Mingti typeface, based on Ming dynasty calligraphy. “There’s no emotion behind them,” Hui told Rest of World.
Most of the fonts on the market have gone through a process of convergent evolution to become blocky and conventional. Hui, who previously designed the New York Times’ Chinese logo and a custom typeface for tech giant Tencent, believes that Chinese type design has become stagnant and unoriginal. Now, forced to head home by the pandemic after only six months, he found himself with little paid work, but finally able pursue a passion project that he’d been sitting on for more than six years: Ku Mincho, a radical rethinking of Chinese type. The previous year, he’d quit his “too comfortable and steady” job at Monotype, one of the world’s largest type foundries, and moved to Munich. In 2020, type designer Julius Hui flew back to his native Hong Kong.
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