On the evening of August 16, the official Weibo of Pen Dyeing Time Studio released an obituary: Shang Wei, the founder and type designer of the studio, died in a car accident on July 11, at the age of 30. Shang Wei has created the title and subtitle font for film and television works such as "I Am Not a Medicine God", "The Demon Boy of Nezha", "The Unknown Generation", "The Legend of Wukong", "Daytime Fireworks", "Army-Master Alliance" and other film and television works. The font of "Hanyi Shangwei Handwriting", which is widely used in posters, variety shows, film and television works, is also from his handwriting.
Illustration: Shang Wei Network Diagram
Shang Wei was born in 1990 in Handan, Hebei Province, and lives in Beijing. He liked calligraphy since he was a child, and began to write brush characters from the age of 6, and at an early age, he was in liu, Yan Zhubei, italic and tall and handsome, and later "Two Kings", Huai Su and other grass, and gradually formed his own style. For more than twenty years, Shang Wei insisted on writing every day, even in the most rebellious middle school era, he must write a few words a day.
Shang Wei officially became a special type designer for the film in 2018. At that time, the production team of "I Am Not a Medicine God" approached him and asked him to customize the handwritten font of the opening credits subtitles for the film. Shang Wei once said that when he was working on the font creation of "I Am Not a Medicine God", he "wrote very plainly and quietly expressed it". After that, Shang Wei has successively designed fonts for "The Legend of Wukong", "Daytime Fireworks", "Army Division Alliance" and so on, and is therefore well known to the public.
Pictured: "I am not a medicine god" poster
In 2019, Shang Wei participated in the recording of the third issue of "The Great Craftsman", through which he showed his life experience and creative philosophy as a type designer. Nowadays, most font library designs are processed by computers, and then arranged and combined. Shang Wei insisted on handwriting, and he was also called "the pioneer of the handwriting font industry" by the industry. In an interview, he said: "What handwriting means to me is more of an emotion and a habit. But I dare not say that the words I write can be called calligraphy, the level of calligraphy is too high, I may not be able to reach it for more than 20 years. As for the reason why I've insisted on it for so many years, I think it's a warm thing, especially in such an internet era, and the little thing of writing words on paper is extraordinarily pure. ”
Illustration: Shang Wei in "The Great Craftsman" network diagram
When developing the "Han Yi Shangwei Handwriting" font package, he spent a full 28 days, writing more than 10 hours a day in addition to eating. During this period, Shang Wei wrote and scrapped 4 brushes, used up 3 bottles of 500g of ink, swollen his right shoulder, and his right hand was a full circle larger than his left hand, insisting on designing the 9169 Chinese characters of the conventional font library one by one in a handwritten manner. This font is very personal, and once released, it has gained a lot of popularity. Many netizens said: "You may not know Shang Wei, but you must have seen his words." ”
Shang Wei's sudden death shocked and regretted his friends in the industry and fans who followed him. The official Weibo of "The Great Craftsman" also posted a tribute: "It is a great honor to get acquainted with him, just like his font, privately he is gentle with people, and thank him for telling us that in this era of popular machine play, the temperature of handwriting is still charming, and the great craftsman - Shang Wei, all the way." (Xinmin Evening News reporter Wu Xuying)