University of Iowa

Iowa Research Online

Theses and Dissertations

Spring 2016

Observation and combination of Chinese and English typography

Huangyuying Zheng
University of Iowa

Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd

Part of the Art Practice Commons

Copyright 2016 Huangyuying Zheng

This thesis is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/3229

Recommended Citation
Zheng, Huangyuying. "Observation and combination of Chinese and English typography." MFA (Master of
Fine Arts) thesis, University of Iowa, 2016.
https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.j3n0ntq7

Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd

Part of the Art Practice Commons


OBSERVATION AND COMBINATION OF CHINESE AND ENGLISH TYPOGRAPHY

By

Huangyuying
Zheng

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for

the Master of Fine Arts degree
in Art in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa

May 2016

Thesis Supervisor: Professor Ab Gratama

Graduate College
The university of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_______________________

MASTER’S THESIS
_______________________

This is to certify that the Master’s thesis of

Huangyuying Zheng

has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the
Master of Fine Arts degree in Art at the May 2016 graduation.

Ab Gratama, Thesis Supervisor

______________________________________

Bradley Dicharry

______________________________________

David Ratcliff

______________________________________

Jeremy Swanston

______________________________________

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank all members of my committee for their encouragement,

insightful input, and inspiration during my three-years of study at the University of Iowa.

I greatly appreciate Professor Ab Gratama for his wonderful instruction, supervision and

encouragement which helped me not only in my study but also my life. I am thankful for

Professor Bradley Dicharry for giving me great critiques and instructions to motive my

inspirations. Professor David Ratcliff for his encouragement with a strong push, to help

me continually working and challenge myself. And Professor Jeremy Swanston for his

great advice which stimulated my creativity. I also would like to thanks all my friends

who helped me unconditionally with my installation. Finally, I am grateful for my mother

and father, for their immeasurable love and support.

ii

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

The interests in the similarities and differences between Chinese characters and

English words lead me to study how various shapes between two languages will affect

designs significantly. The curiosity inspired the development of making two different

languages’ forms appear more aesthetically compatible. Moreover, from questioning the

characteristics of Chinese and English, I developed interests in recreating a new multi-

purpose visual language system which can be read in both Chinese and English without

losing any character’s original form. Through out my study, I rediscovered the meaning

and origin behind Chinese and English character, explored the history of the characters.

The interactions between oriental and occidental letters created a new series of forms

that serves as a bridge between the visual and the verbal, and brought a fresh visual

language to the surrounding world.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES v

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION 01

II. REASONS 02

III. PROBLEMS DISCOVERED 04

IV. DISCUSSION ON CHINESE PICTOGRAPH 05

V. EXPLORATION OF FORMS 09

VI. EXPANSION ON CALLIGRAPHY STYLE 11

VII. STUDY ON VARIOUS TYPEFACES 13

VIII. COMBINATION OF FINAL FORMS 16

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE

1. Development of Roman Letter Example 21

2. Lascaux Cave Example 22

3. Chinese First Grader Textbook Example 23

4. Evolvement of Chinese character Example 24

5. Sketch of Studying Forms of Ancient Chinese Character 25

6. Chinese Writing Chart Example 26

7. Chinese Character of "Fish" Example 27

8. Design of Character "Fish" 28

9. Series Design of New Pictographs 29

10. Example of Chinese Character "Dust" 30

11. Example of Chinese Character "Deer" 31

12. Example of Chinese Character "Soil" 32

13. Partially List of Chinese Radicals 33

14. Sketch of Reconstruction of Chinese Character No.1 34

15. Sketch of Reconstruction of Chinese Character No.2 35

16. Example of Text as Imagery 36

17. Example of Asian Calligraphy 37

18. Sketch of Calligraphy-style Structure 38

19. Sketch of Combination of New Calligraphy Character No.1 39

20. Sketch of Combination of New Calligraphy Character No.2 40

21. Example of Inscription on Trajan's Column 41

22. Example of Basic Style of Chinese Character Writing 42

23. Examples of Modern Chinese Characters 43

24. Example of Helvetica Typeface 44

25. Example of Helvetica Type-Family 45

26. Example of Founder Lanting Black Type Family 46

27. Example of Form-changing of Letter "S" in Process Design of Character

"Sourness" 47

28. Example of Dual Character's Process 48

29. Example of Creation of Dual Character "Affection" 49

30. Example from Animation to Show Process of Dual Letters 50

31. Collection of Dual Characters 51

vi

INTRODUCTION

As someone who was born in China but pursued studies in the United States, I

have developed a great interest in the similarities and differences between Chinese

characters and English words. My familiarity with and interest in the two different

alphabets and different ways of word formation is helpful for me to be always conscious

of the way I use typography in graphic design. I constantly explore the forms of these

two alphabets and how they can affect the overall design of my work. I have noticed that

due to the various shapes between two languages, the overall layout of of a single

design will be affected significantly. Therefore, since characters in these two languages

are so different from each other, I am very interested in whether I can make these two

different language forms appear more aesthetically compatible. Moreover, I am keen on

combining both oriental and occidental letters to create a new letter system which can

be read in both Chinese and English without losing any character’s original form. By

detailed study of Chinese characters and English letters, this thesis aims to explore

whether Chinese and English words can converge together nicely in design; and to

explore whether a new visual communication system can be created through the

combination of Chinese and English for audiences from both countries.

REASONS

Personally I consider letters as one of the greatest invention and innovation in

human history. Written language is the essential communication system in our society.

It is what differentiated the human race from other species. We use written language to

record our history, art and great thoughts. Without writing system we will not be able to

learn from the past, record our failures, and create the new future to evolve into a

brighter future.

Everyone knows the power of language and writings. It has been recorded in the

Bible 2000 years ago, when people tried to reach for the heaven by building the Tower

of Babel. This simple religious story explained the origin of “confusion of tongues”: God

differentiated the language to confuse human race so they are unable to communicate

and thus they scatter and fail to work together to build the tower that can reach heaven.

This fascinating story inspired me and made me consider the differences between

eastern and western languages. These two languages have such different systems and

origins that I started to wonder whether there is a possibility to combine these two

languages together. The thoughts were basic. I am not trying to create something major

and successful that can unite the human race to build the Tower of Babel again. I just

simply want to create a bridge between Chinese and English since these two languages

are both profoundly related to my personal experience. These languages represent the

cultures that affect my thoughts and reflect who I am as a person. So I decide to focus

my thesis on combination of Chinese and English.

I decide to create a new visual language system called “Dual”. The reason is that

I want to create something that can connect people from both western and eastern

society, that can represent both societies, that can be understood by both societies. In

order to achieve these goals, I need to design something with “dual” meanings or

representation, so it can serve as a bridge for people from both cultures. Moreover, as I

study in the United States, I have witnessed the lack of interaction between Chinese

and American students. So, by creating a “dual” language for students from both

cultures to explore, it may bring forth more effective communication among them.

PROBLEMS DISCOVERED

Chinese and English word systems are very different from each other due to

several reasons. The origin of English alphabet is phonogram which had developed

from ancient roman letters (Figure 1). In English system, only 26 letters need to be

studied. As typical phonogram, each letter is serving as representative of a specific

sound. By mixing and matching these letters differently, English words are created and

used as communication tools to form sentences, start conversations, and convey ideas.

On the other hand, Asian languages have entirely different origins. Most Asian

languages, especially Chinese, are originated from pictograms and ideograms, which

means that each Chinese character is representing a form of an actual object or a very

abstract idea. Since each object will need a brand new pictogram or ideogram to

represent, so unlike English word, Chinese character is tremendous in total number. An

average Chinese student often would accumulate at least 20,000 characters during the

academic life. So learning and understanding Chinese will be an extremely strange and

difficult experience for English speakers. It is also true of Chinese when they started to

learn English.

My intention is to make a new visual communication that both English speaker

and Chinese speaker would feel comfortable while using. The idea is to create a “hybrid”

between Chinese and English, make a new typography that can emerge both culture,

make something tolerable and “dual”. So, my goal is to create the series of new

characters that can be enjoyed by both English and Chinese people.

DISCUSSION ON CHINESE PICTOGRAPH

The first thought that pops up to my head is to create a series of pictographs

based on Chinese. The reason why I choose to start with pictographs is pictograph, or

picture is the universal language that can be understood by anyone. Starting from

30,000 B.C, our ancestors used pictographs on the Lascaux cave to communicate, and

nowadays we can still understand what they are trying to express: an amazing hunting

trip (Figure 2). So based on the idea of creating a more universal language, I decide to

create pictographs based on contemporary simplified Chinese characters. The intriguing

thing is that the contemporary Chinese characters that are in use now are originated

from ancient pictographs. I am actually tracing back to ancient Chinese while trying to

create something new.

When I first started designing, I wanted my new pictographs to mimic the shape

of actual Chinese characters. At the same time, I want to make sure each character is

well-designed so each can exist along as a strong design piece for people to

understand. The purpose is for people to understand and learn Chinese faster by simply

exploring and memorizing the form that I created.

By doing some research from the internet and Chinese textbooks, I targeted a

group of Chinese characters that are often taught in 1st grade primary school in China to

use as experiments (Figure 3). I then collected a series of pictograms which show the

evolution process between ancient Chinese pictographs and modern Chinese (Figure 4).

To organize the information I have obtained, I hand-drew all the information and shapes

I can find on these Chinese letters. Since china is a huge country with complicated

history along with 56 minority groups, origins of some ancient pictograms are varying.

However, I documented them all, and tried to revise forms and shapes of these

characters based on my own understanding and internet research (Figure 5). Then I

restyled each character into a brand-new pictograph based on the simplified Chinese

character. The reason I chose simplified Chinese is because it is the latest style of

Chinese that are used in contemporary China. It is the most commonly-used style, and

it has a more geometric looking applying to itself. Most strokes in characters are

composed by horizontal or vertical lines with few strokes that are similar to “tail” stroke

in English typography design. All contemporary Chinese characters are designed within

an imaginary rectangular frame, that is how first graders learn to write with the correct

and similar dimension (Figure 6). When I first designed my pictograms, I did not use any

frame as reference. I designed all my pictograms based on shapes only, I borrowed

shapes and ideas from modern Chinese forms and the ancient pictogram shapes.

Compare to contemporary Chinese, the ancient language has much more freedom in

the strokes since writings were invented from random doodling on the rock. So the

strokes vary and ancient languages do not have much imaginary frames or imaginary

lines to follow. Thus, it becomes confusing when I try to combine two characters from

different languages to create a brand new pictogram. For example, the character

“fish”(鱼) in Chinese is so different from its ancient pictogram which is more like a free-

style line drawing of fish (Figure 7). When I am designing the pictograms I have to

seriously consider how to create a new graphic of a fish without losing the

modernization and geometric forms of contemporary simplified Chinese (Figure 8). It

takes lots of thinking to reach the forms that I believe contains characteristic of both

contemporary Chinese typography design and structure of ancient Chinese writing.

Therefore, I focused on creating a series of new pictographs based on my theory and I

kept all forms in the approximately same proportion (Figure 9).

However, when I finish creating the pictographic of some characters, several

problems occurred. First is that these new pictograms I designed are too illustration or

icon like, which can hardly be considered as “written language” to the common crowd.

Second is because of the complex of Chinese, Some Chinese characters are

pictograms, some are ideograms. Since Ideograms often represent abstract ideas, it

can be hard to remake them into simple geometric shapes. Furthermore, through my

research, I discovered that the form of some Chinese characters were inspired from an

actual event or stories, or even combination of two different Chinese characters, which

adds to the intricacy to represent all the abstract ideas within one simple structure. For

instance, the character dust (尘) in Chinese have two different origins. One is combined

from the character small (小) and soil （土）, so how should I create the new forms from

here? Should I design character “small” and character “dust” and then combine these

two? Or should I just simply focus on creating a brand new character “dust” without the

influence from the other two characters? Correspondingly, when exploring the ancient

pictograms of “dust” (Figure 10), the word has such complicated meaning. The top part

of the character means deer (Figure 11) and the bottom part means soil (Figure 12).

The poetic meaning behind the word “dust” here actually refers to the floating soil in the

air that was caused by a running deer. From this perspective comes the question of how

to mimic the character here. Should I create a pictograph of a deer and then a

pictograph of soil? Then although I followed the meaning of the ancient character, my

audiences won’t be able to understand this character since they will need a narrator to

explain the idea behind it. This necessity of narrations on my new characters violated

my idea of creating something straight forward and easily understandable. At this point,

I find it difficult to create a series of new pictograph based on the forms of original

Chinese. Last but not the least, the most important reason that I gave up on this idea is

that these designs did not fulfill my original intention at all. Although each pictogram

worked as individual design, but none of the character made any connection between

English and Chinese, which does not serve the main purpose of hybriding English and

Chinese together, to represent both culture and language within the new forms.

The overall visual language I created here is more like icons for a series of

objects that I am trying to represent. They all can stand along as pictographs, without

any reference of Chinese or English background behind them. They are all symbolic

icons of simple objects. They are not the brand new “dual” language for Chinese and

English culture. After realization, I quickly changed my direction to exploring the form

and characteristics of languages themselves instead of trying to creating new icon-like

pictographs.

EXPLORATION OF FORMS

I started to simply explore the forms of both Chinese and English in order to

understand them, thus to create better combination between them.

Chinese characters are usually composed of different strokes and parts. When

writing Chinese, I often sense a process of constructing lines to form new shapes with

meaning behind. Chinese characters can be decomposed into components called

radicals (or Bushou, 部首)(Figure 13). The most commonly accepted table of radicals for

traditional Chinese characters consists of 214 entries. Each radical can be thought of as

an individual alphabet, instead of using these “alphabet” to mimic the sound in the

language system like in English system. By composing these Chinese radical, new

pictographs or ideograms occur through the structure.

The exploration of how Chinese character was constructed truly inspired me. I

started to think, what if I use English alphabet letters as the construction pieces, or

forms of radical in Chinese character, in order to to restructure the Chinese language

(Figure 14). Through this process, I would be able to present English and Chinese

languages to my audience at the same time. These two languages would be bound

together and interwoven with each other. Due to the interactions between alphabets of

these two languages, they will appear inseparable since the forms of English alphabet

would become the support of the Chinese character’s structure.

Moreover, I feel this is the best way to bringing people from both societies

together. In daily life, when looking at something strange, people often intend to

immediately recognize something more familiar to them. And that is how this new “dual”

 10

languages bring audience together even they have different background. Since the new

“dual” system would contain both English alphabet with exterior of Chinese character,

people from both cultures will discover the language they know through one single

language system and then be able to communicate and interact. When English speaker

look at my design, they mistake the deign for normal Asian language at first, but once

they explore the form closely and discover the English alphabets within each character,

they will be able to spell out the word in English to understand the “dual” character. At

the same time, English speakers can study the form of the Chinese character through

the exploration. Same with Chinese viewers, they may immediately recognize the forms

of the Chinese characters first. However, by exploring the forms thoroughly, they will

notice the English alphabets hidden within each character. Thus, Chinese readers can

learn from the “dual” letters and may be able to recognize the English words in the

future. This new visual system I am trying to create is a new way of communication that

relates to people from both occidental and oriental society. It is a language that can be

acknowledged by audience from both cultures although they may not speak each

other’s language.

 11

EXPANSION ON CALLIGRAPHY STYLE

Soon after I decided the forms that I want to work with, I made several sketches

on the combination of the character (Figure 15). Then I started to explore the style of

how I want to present my character. I was considering experiment with calligraphy since

the admiration toward the movement of pen stroke had occurred long ago. Also the

sense of hand-made and crafting can really relate people to the ancient topography

style. More importantly, studies of calligraphy exist in both western and eastern culture,

so I think incorporating calligraphy would bring these two languages together more

closely. So I decided to hand-write my sketches with calligraphy style.

Although calligraphy culture exists in both east and west, there are still

differences apply. Western culture has an interesting idea of using text as imagery

(Figure 16). They combined text together to create patterns or new graphics out of

calligraphy, to add extra visual effect with the design. This is something eastern

calligraphy does not have since eastern calligraphy culture often considers itself as a

more serious form of art (Figure 17). So since there is calligraphy culture in both

countries for a long time, I decided to use the western calligraphy pen to hand-write the

eastern letter in a way that is similar to the eastern writing style (Figure 18). Moreover,

exploring how to design text, and to form text into a new texture interests me (Figure 19).

This is something I have not tried with Chinese character.

The result of experiment with calligraphy was intriguing. each form has so much

freedom to create from. The new texture that was created by the combination of “dual”

characters contains the aesthetic sense of eastern art pattern. Each combination

 12

blossomed their unique beauty, and so many new combinations could be created

through different pairing (Figure 20). These new forms could be considered as the

ancient texture people often see on porcelains or fabrics. With the different way that

each letter and structure was designed or placed, sometimes certain English alphabet

within the “dual” letters would stand out so much, giving audiences a hint that these

calligraphic patterns are actually created from both Chinese and English alphabets.

However, after experimenting with calligraphy for a while, I started to realize

although it has been a wonderful experience of creating the new character by hand,

couple problems have come along with it. First is that since I am not expertise on both

western and eastern calligraphy, I sometimes could not control or decide the stroke I am

writing which goes exactly where I want them to be. Each time I write a “dual” letter, the

appearance often varies from the previous time when I wrote. This challenged my

purpose of creating a smoothing and well-developed series of new characters. Another

problem is that although the hand-written style has more freedom on creativity, but the

freestyled forms also might confuse my audience and lower the readability and legibility

of the dual letters. I wanted to create something people can easily understand.

Therefore, although I have deep interests in the calligraphy art within both occident and

orient history, I decided to move away from this artistic style for this thesis. Nevertheless,

I will continuously study the calligraphy from both cultures and hope to create new

characters’ style based on art of calligraphy to create beautiful typefaces.

 13

STUDY ON VARIOUS TYPEFACES

Since calligraphic style cannot fulfill my requirement of creating a well-developed

series of character with great legibility, I decided to design my new dual characters

digitally, by consulting the typefaces that have already been well-designed throughout

history.

The first problem occurred is whether I should use serif or san-serif. When

thinking about typefaces, I researched some old typography. When comes to old

typefaces, the ancient roman letters on Trajan columns are actually all serif letters due

to the brushwork the ancient workers used (Figure 21). So the serif has always been

considered as a more traditional kind of typeface in English typography. Later on, sans-

serif was invented during 18th century and evolved into this more contemporary and

geometric structures. San-serif quickly spread into every corner on this planet, and was

wildly used in the world. On the contrary, when we explore the ancient Chinese writings,

it is hard to find any sign of serif like strokes in Chinese calligraphy (Figure 22). It is not

until later under the influences of western typefaces that Chinese typography designer

began to adopt the idea of serif and san-serif. By simply exploring Chinese character

visually, I find Chinese characters’ strokes often have a very strong sense of simple

geometric feelings (Figure 23). Thus, I decided to use well-designed san-serif typeface

as stencils or references for my new “dual” characters deign.

Through some research, I decided to use Helvetica as the stencil for my English

characters (Figure 24) because Helvetica is a simple, wildly used, contemporary form

with strong sense of geometric feelings. These characteristics are significant for

 14

restructuring Chinese character. Also Helvetica has been considered as the world’s

favorite typeface at this point. Moreover, with its broad choice of size and type families

(Figure 25), and some twist on my own, I believe that Helvetica typefaces would be

perfect to be used as a basic structure to build the “dual” characters.

For Chinese characters, I want to choose something equally contemporary

without losing Chinese’s traditional form and geometric shapes. Thus I pick out a

typeface called Founder Lanting Black(方正兰亭黑体)，a typeface that was designed in

1990s with a selective amount of choices in type families (Figure 26). The most

important reason I choose this font is, through my research, I discovered that the

Founder Lanting Black was inspired by the design of Helvetica. This means that these

two typefaces will work perfectly to create a new harmonious form. So, I decided to use

these two letters as my base structures and stencils. Also, throughout the design, I

sometimes would twist or recreate my own shapes of the English letters to make them

fit better with the shape of Chinese character. For example, I would sometimes deign

my own letter S into a rectangular like geometric form, in order to make it mimic a

straight stock in Chinese character (Figure 27).

However, it is quite interesting to work with both typefaces from two different

languages. The challenge is to combine both languages together slickly and

harmoniously. The similar style of two stencil typefaces certainly helped me to generate

a balanced design.

I was pleased with the decision on the sans-serifs. I also realize that there are so

many directions and choices of typeface I can choose in the future to help me adjust to

a better combination. But through this combination of simple, geometric looking

 15

typefaces, I can achieve my goal of creating an easily understandable and readable

“dual” character.

 16

COMBINATION OF FINAL FORMS

Finally, after I pick out the perfect typefaces for basic structure, it was necessary

to make adjustment and combine these western and eastern letters from my previous

sketches and experiments.

As I explained before, structures of occidental letters and oriental letters are quite

distinct from each other. Creation of Western words are more based on the

rearrangement of the sequence of the twenty-six alphabet letters within the words. On

the contrary, Chinese characters do not have basic alphabet letters to rearrange with

and each character is constructed by different strokes in various arrangements

(although there are 214 radicals we can work with but it is still plenty of work). Each

Chinese character is almost like a brand new pictograph; Chinese is so heavily visual

based. So my process is to pick out Chinese characters and pair them up with correct

English words. My intention is only to use the alphabet letters within each English word

as the “strokes”, to re-create the forms of matching Chinese character. I would not add

or delete any of the alphabets in the words to confuse my audience later on. The

purpose of this process is to ensure that people from both cultures can understand the

characters that I created without the need to understand the other language. Since

English reader will be able to understand the new dual character by spelling out the

English alphabets within the character, I would not allow misspelling words to occur and

mystify my reader. Also I worked each letter over and over again to ensure the visual

satisfaction in the end (Figure 28).

 17

I designed roughly 30 Chinese characters for my thesis, including: black(黑),

white(白), wind(风), snow(雪), moon(月), sun(日), rain(雨), thunder(雷), sky(天), bird(鸟),

beast(兽), east(东), west(西), south(南), north(北), mid(中), affection(爱), hatred(恨),

spring(春), summer(夏), autumn(秋), winter(冬), sourness(酸), sweet(甜), bitter(苦),

spiciness(辣), happiness(喜), sadness(悲), angry(怒), amused(乐). I picked these

characters because they are the most basic characters that kids would learn in the first

or second grades in primary school in China. Also some of these characters are often

used within the idiom group. For example I picked out “east(东), west(西), south(南),

north(北), mid(中),” because Chinese students often learn these basic characters as a

group and use them together. Plus, all these characters are describing directions, so

learning characters within the same categories will help English readers with their

memorization as well.

Another thing that my audience may notice is that some of the English words that

I paired up with might not be the words that has been used commonly to English

speaker. For example, people may prefer to say sour instead of sourness(酸) or the

word “love” is more generally used than the word “affection”(爱). The reason why

sometimes I picked out an unfamiliar form of certain English words is that there is

divergence between Chinese and English characters. Some of the Chinese characters

are so complicated with great number of strokes when compared to the English words

that people often use. For instance, the Chinese character 爱 , which is usually

translated into “love”. But by visually comparing the differences between these two

 18

characters, it’s easy to find that Chinese characters contain 10 strokes and the word

“love” only can fulfill 4 strokes. So it is almost impossible to use only 4 strokes to

remake a character with such complicated structure. That is why I have to work around

the word “love” to pick a new English word that contains more strokes, such as the word

“affection”, which contains 9 English alphabet (strokes) to help rebuild the Chinese

character (Figure 29). Therefore, that is how I picked all the vocabularies for my thesis.

My progression of combining and creating the new dual letters are easy. The

process of exploring the conformation of the Chinese character was followed by

sketching out the placement of each English alphabet so they can substitute each

individual stroke within the Chinese character. After the replacement of the letters

happen, I will carefully redesign and resize the form of each alphabet letter accordingly

to make each letter appear more close to the form of Chinese stroke that was

supplanted for. During the process of exploring and reshaping characters from both

languages, I was aware of the importance of aesthetics and balance in design as well.

The new dual letters should be visually pleasant to my audience, also clear, accurate

and easily recognizable. In order to present each design step clearly to my audiences, I

made an animation to illustrate my development of some dual characters (Figure 30).

Overall, after close study of the forms of different languages and development of

my design idea, the final product of my dual letters fulfilled my purpose of creating a

new visual language that can be easily recognized by audience from both countries

while serving as a bridge to connect both culture (Figure 31).

I am pleased with the new dual letters that I created. Each letter has its unique

characteristic, but also can be easily recognized. They not only connect both cultures

 19

but also reflect me as a designer who is influenced by both eastern and western culture.

These letters share the similar style and character, which forms a strong group together.

The interviewing alphabets within the character can be easily discovered by English

speakers to spell out the words. Chinese audiences also can easily identify the Chinese

form in order to understand the meaning behind each character. With a sense of

aesthetics, I designed a new series of characters that can surprise people and be

enjoyable when people looking at them.

Although I have achieved my purpose of creating dual letters at this point, there

are still some adjustments which can be made to the design. For instance, there is not a

strict dimension and framing rule for my characters, so they all appear varied in size. If I

want to keep working on this thesis, I should do more research on typography, so I can

set a more standard frame or “imaginary line” for each character to follow. Also I would

like to explore different typefaces with my character to see if they can produce

something more visually intriguing. Moreover, it will be interesting to combine multiple

characters together to see if it is possible to create new texture or artistic calligraphy

form. There are so new directions for me to explore.

My exploration started from questioning the characteristics of Chinese and

English and recreating a new multi-purpose visual language system. These simple

questions brought me to rediscover the meaning and origin behind Chinese and English

character, rethink the history and explore the formation of the characters. I studied how

these letters and shapes can interact and communicate with each other to blossom into

something new. Looking back on all the sketches I have made and all the steps I have

made, all the struggles, all the research, I am confident that none of this time has been

 20

wasted. I enjoyed myself while fully exploring the similarity, differences, simplification,

and combination of Chinese and English letters. Although I have achieved my

satisfaction with this project for now, there are still problems need to be solved and it will

always be a life-long project for me to keep working on.

 21

Figure 1 Development of Roman Letter Example

 22

Figure 2 Lascaux Cave Example

 23

Figure 3 Chinese First Grader Textbook Example

 24

Figure 4 Evolvement of Chinese Character Example

 25

Figure 5 Sketch of Studying Forms of Ancient Chinese Character

 26

Figure 6 Chinese Writing Chart Example

 27

Figure 7 Chinese Character of "Fish" Example

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Figure 8 Design of Character "Fish"

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Figure 9 Series Design of New Pictographs

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Figure 10 Example of Chinese Character "Dust"

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Figure 11 Example of Chinese Character "Deer"

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Figure 12 Example of Chinese Character "Soil"

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Figure 13 Partially List of Chinese Radicals

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Figure 14 Sketch of Reconstruction of Chinese Character No.1

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Figure 15 Sketch of Reconstruction of Chinese Character No.2

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Figure 16 Example of Text as Imagery

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Figure 17 Example of Asian Calligraphy

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Figure 18 Sketch of Calligraphy-style Structure

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Figure 19 Sketch of Combination of New Calligraphy Character No.1

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Figure 20 Sketch of Combination of New Calligraphy Character No.2

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Figure 21 Example of Inscription on Trajan's Column

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Figure 22 Example of Basic Style of Chinese Character Writing

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Figure 23 Examples of Modern Chinese Characters

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Figure 24 Example of Helvetica Typeface

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Figure 25 Example of Helvetica Type-Family

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Figure 26 Example of Founder Lanting Black Type Family

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Figure 27

Example of Form-changing of Letter "S" in Process Design of Character "Sourness"

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Figure 28 Example of Dual Character's Process

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Figure 29 Example of Creation of Dual Character "Affection"

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Figure 30 Example from Animation to Show Process of Dual Letters

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Figure 31 Collection of Dual Characters