We deal with words every day. Words in books, words on computers, words on mobile phones, words that can be found everywhere on the street... But have you ever wondered Chinese font, where it came from?
Are you thinking of the Yan body and the willow body in calligraphy? But alas, they are not fonts, they are bookish.
During the Republic of China period, most of the Chinese books used italics and imitations of the Song, rather than the Song and black bodies that we now commonly see, because the Song and black bodies were not designed by the mainland in the strict sense. The black body, in particular, is entirely Japanese design. At that time, the only fonts that belonged to China were italics naturally formed from the book style, and the imitation Song that evolved. So much so that Zheng Wuchang, the founder of the Han chinese Zhengkai Printing Book Bureau, once wrote to Chiang Kai-shek and asked for italics as the official font.
So where do so many Chinese fonts we use today come from?
In last night's Oriental Satellite TV "Next Station" program, Li Zhiqian, a font researcher and practitioner and initiator of "Shanghai Movable Type", took out the relics of an old man, and a thick stack of "Printing Movable Type Research Reference Materials" unveiled the veil of history and let us see the behind-the-scenes heroes behind the Chinese fonts - China's first generation of font designers.
The owner of these work materials is Xu Xuecheng, who is the first generation of type designers in China.
Li Zhiqian introduced: "I also met some old type designers in Shanghai by chance. Then I discovered that the history of Chinese type design was actually born in Shanghai. In 1960, at the Shanghai Institute of Printing Technology, they set up a group called the Font Research Office. Then some of them came from the printing house, they were engravers, some were calligraphy masters, like Xu Xuecheng, who was actually the art editor of the publishing house, because he wrote art very well, so he was recruited and transferred to the Printing Institute. ”
Since there was no such profession as a type designer before, everyone in the research group was doing type design for the first time. So on the one hand, they go abroad to study, on the other hand, they continue to summarize and learn from each other in their work.
These materials were left behind when they were studying and designing song and blackbody one.
In the records, it can be found that there are seven ways of writing points that we are now accustomed to, in the past. "Some are written horizontally, some are written vertically, some are written as apostrophes, and some are written as folds, so it is actually the type designers who jointly decide with the linguists of the text that we have today." Li Zhiqian introduced.
In addition, the first generation of type designers also had an important contribution, that is, they participated in the formulation of simplified characters. It can be said that the simplified words that we are familiar with now are also determined by them.
(Look at the news Knows reporter: Zhou Yu Intern Editor: Zhang Xujun)