Any recommendation re. book/magazine with decent Chinese typesetting?

phf3 January 2006 · 02:12

Dear type community,

I have to work sometimes with chinese characters and regardless of the sad fact that I can't read Hanzi (chinese characters) I would be interested in seeing and learning from excellent examples of chinese typography, which right now I haven't found yet and probably couldn't even tell (badly distorted typefaces I saw a lot).

I would be delighted if somebody could recommend a nicely done book and/or magazine in chinese language (preferrably mixed with english terms).

Thanks,
Philipp

du4qin13 January 2006 · 08:38

Hi, Philipp,

Unfortunately to my knowledge there hasn't been such a book yet. I am thinking of starting to work on something similiar to this, a book on chinese type design and typography, preferably published bilingually. But that's not gonna happen within some years I guess.

Type setting in Chinese is not as complicated as with English. There are no ligature, hyphenation etc. to ponder about, and not as many considerations in the process of its type setting. However, there are certain rules in this regard, but it would be hard to summarize and introduce to you in a short time. You could write to me about your specific situation if you want. I'll see what I can do to help.