Typography

Typographic creativity is a major shortcoming in Chinese design. Walk down any street and you’ll find the same familiar styles everywhere. The signs above shops, the advertisements lining the sidewalks — almost all of the typefaces used are simply pulled from computer font libraries. From the imposing signage of “Such-and-Such Bank” down to the unremarkable little shops tucked into countless side streets, it’s all the same. The owners of these storefronts, with the convenience technology affords them, have turned the street into an exhibition hall for computer font libraries. Song, Hei, Kai, Fangsong… they wash over the eyes of passersby in a uniformly templated way.

Search Flickr using the keyword “street typography” and you’ll find a wealth of wonderful “signage” from abroad — most of it strikingly original and exquisitely crafted, far more interesting than the convenience-driven, templated “design” we’re used to seeing here. This isn’t an idea that came out of nowhere — I had a similar feeling once before, while looking through 500 Book Covers. Now that we live in a thoroughly digitized society, where people can reproduce and disseminate text with a computer so effortlessly, who would still choose the slow, traditional craft of hand-lettering?