The stroke form of Chinese characters refers to the different strokes that are structured into a Chinese character in the philological sense. In the design sense, it refers to the design form of the strokes, for example, there are various forms of horizontal strokes. For typeface design, stroke shape is an important feature that distinguishes one set of fonts from another, just like the distinct physical features that distinguish one object from another of the same kind.

Stroke shape is the most critical step in Chinese font design, which not only determines the style direction of the font, but also is an important symbol of the legibility of Chinese characters.

Brush shape design affects the style of the font

The calligrapher Wang Xizhi said in his "Twelve Chapters on Penmanship", "A point out of place is like a beauty's sick eye; a picture out of joint is like a strong man's broken arm." Design a good font, there must be a good pen design, which is like building a house first to the beams, pillars, walls and stones to deal with perfection, a word in the design of a stroke is not coordinated, like a beauty sick an eye, instant decline.

There are more than thirty basic strokes in Chinese characters. In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Mrs. Wei wrote "The Pen Array", which divided them into seven categories, and later Ouyang Xun's "Eight Decisions" added another category, becoming eight categories: "point" is like the peak of the falling stone, "lying hook" is like the first moon in the long sky, and "horizontal" is like the first moon in the long sky. The "horizontal" is like the clouds of a thousand miles, the "vertical" is like the dead vine of a thousand years, the "diagonal hook" is like a strong pine folding backwards and hanging from a rocky cliff, and the "horizontal folding hook" is like the crossbow of ten thousand bullets. The "horizontal folding hook" is like a crossbow of ten thousand bullets, the "skew" is a sharp sword cutting off the horn and teeth of a rhinoceros and elephant, and the "down" is a wave often three over the pen.

These descriptions speak very graphically of the essentials of the beauty of the basic strokes of Chinese characters; the point should have the momentum of a peak falling rock, the recumbent hook should have the curvature of the first moon, and the horizontal should have the ebb and flow of a long formation of clouds. These are the essentials that should be observed even in the most unattractive black characters, for example, the down stroke should have a wave of ups and downs in order to appear dynamic.

In font design, the pen shape must also be determined in advance, and once it is set, the style of the font is mostly set. For example, the Shanghai font research office takes out the pen shapes of regular, Song and black fonts before design and applies them to the pen shape design of imitation Song, black and regular fonts. Generally speaking, black type has the least number of stroke types, and regular type has the most, because black type greatly unifies stroke shapes and reduces variations. For example, the design of the character "十" in Song, with its different thicknesses, makes the twenty-five "十" characters show different expressions, each with its own beauty. These twenty-five variations do not include the variations in the starting and ending parts of the strokes, which are in fact the most important shapers of the style. The Eight Methods of Winged Characters says: "The method of a character is valuable in its structure. The magic of a brush stroke lies in the beginning and the end." The treatment of the beginning and ending parts of the strokes is especially crucial.

We will commonly used different Song horizontal painting together, observe the end part of their strokes decorative angle, size, angle, line curvature of each different, and then combined with different thickness changes, the style of the font is also varied.

For example, the three skeleton structure of the author's drawings are identical, the three characters center of gravity, size and proportion are all from the same skeleton, but the pen shape is very different, the formation of the perception is a completely different font. If the pen shape is the same, but the center of gravity is different, the ratio of width to flatness is different, or the thickness is different, the difference is not great, and it feels like a family of characters. As you can see, the shape of the brush is decisive in shaping the style.

Stroke design affects the readability of words

If a single character does not have its own morphological characteristics, each character is about the same shape, and the stroke structure is monotonous, almost geometric or pattern form, the format is uniform, then together they are easy to mix, so the text is not easy to identify and easy to cause confusion, and it is quite difficult to read. For this reason, it is necessary to make the strokes of each character as much as possible with certain characteristics, showing the strength and weakness of the height, in order to strengthen the overall momentum of the word. Western fonts use serifs in this regard, and the beginning and end of the strokes are well-defined, also highlighting the focus of the strokes in the font, making the letters more readable. Chinese characters should also have certain characteristics and variations in the starting and ending strokes, hooks and apostrophes, dots, and shoulders of the characters to make the font more readable.

Japanese typeface researcher Naohichi Imai also said, "Characters made up of monotonous, geometric staggered strokes are easily confused with each other because they lack signs to identify each other. In order to be distinctive, there must be variations in thickness and prominent characteristic strokes. The role of decorative lines in Western scripts is referable."

For example, the formation of the clerical variation of Chinese characters was to change the lack of morphological features in the seal script by adding the "silkworm head and goose tail" variation. The last stroke of a single character in Chinese script is often the thickest and heaviest stroke of the swallow's tail, and the writer completes it as if drawing a "resting note". This has changed the endless feeling of the previous seal script and strengthened the symbolic features, making it easier for people to read. If the "silkworm's head and goose's tail" were removed, the identification features would be drastically reduced. Based on the traces of writing in Chinese official script, later generations came up with another rule that facilitates recognition - "geese do not fly in pairs", i.e., there is only one heavy stroke in a character like "geese tail". This makes the characteristics of a single character more obvious, and one can realize that it is an independent single character when seeing a "wild goose tail", which is not easily confused with other characters.

Of course, inappropriate and excessive stroke design can also make recognition more difficult. Strokes such as Variety, Doll, and Bamboo, which have a novelty, make the characters blurred and less recognizable. And a pen shape with absolutely no embellishment like black is also less suitable for body reading. Japanese designer Hiroshi Komiyama writes in his article "The Current State of Blackface and the Construction of a New World in the Future": "The lines of blackface create an extremely square space, stable but lacking variation and rhythm. In long articles lined up in small-sized black type, the white space between the lines can appear narrow, thus increasing eye irritation in recognition and making it difficult to read."

Stroke shape is the representation of the writing heritage of Chinese fonts

Chinese characters have an unparalleled writing heritage, and this heritage is evident in the design of modern Chinese body fonts. Regular and Song-like fonts are undoubtedly written characters, and the starting, closing, turning, pressing, and pointing of Song fonts all come from the transformation of the writing style.

In his article "What are the characteristics of 'black two' font", Xu Xue Cheng, an old generation designer and non-genetic inheritor of font design in Shanghai, recalls the design of the black two style, and writes: "The stroke form plays a major role in the formation of the black two style.

Because its stroke form and decoration reflect the rhythm of the starting and closing strokes of the Chinese character when written, the horizontal and vertical strokes are decorated with flares at the ends. Firstly, it indicates the starting and closing strokes of the Chinese character, and secondly, it makes the shape of the character more dignified and stable. In the form of the pick, dot, skew, press, and hook, it seems to have the stroke meaning of Chinese writing, reflecting the national form of Chinese characters and creating a distinctive style".

When we carefully analyze the characteristics of the pen forms of the Chinese black style from Black II, we can verify what Mr. Xu Xue Cheng, Sr. said, that the starting part of the vertical strokes and apostrophes strongly imitate the traces of writing, the small decorative corners are small on the left but large on the right, the arcs are soft, and the changes of the flat down in waves are even from coarse to fine and then to coarse again, which perfectly match the writing strokes. Even the horizontal strokes are preserved: while the horizontal strokes in regular Chinese characters are usually thick at the ends and thin in the middle, Song style turns the beginning of the strokes into decorative corners and eliminates the thick and thin changes of the middle strokes, while Black style only reduces the decorative corners at the ends and preserves the thick and thin changes of the middle strokes.

It can be seen that the so-called "horn" at the ends of the strokes in bold is originally a pen design, and it is necessary to correct the current misconceptions that have been deduced from the results. These erroneous views, there is an explanation of the "flared mouth" is to compensate for the illusion of the font strokes and the emphasis on the strokes, there is a statement that is to reduce the impact of ink spillage phenomenon on the clarity of the strokes, enhance the recognition of the font in small letters, deliberately enlarge the two ends of the line. Both of these statements are incidental results of the pen shape design, a beneficial visual effect brought about by this pen shape design, rather than the original design source.

Here we can quoteHiroshi Komiyama to further illustrate the relationship between type design and tradition: "Ming Dynasty Style (Song Style) has a highly stylized shape, and more importantly, it still maintains the form of thickness variations, movement characteristics, and basic elements developed by brush handwriting, and it has not lost the composition of the 'line The unique atmosphere formed by the blending of size, character weight, and line length in the 'line' group of characters, which can only be described as 'the rhythm of breathing', is what allows the Ming Dynasty style to capture the deepest feelings of people."

Conclusion

The formation of Chinese font style is influenced by the characteristics of the brush shape, the shape of the middle palace, the position of the center of gravity, and the shape of the character surface. Of these, the brush shape is the first thing to be considered. The difference in stroke shape determines the style of the font, and furthermore affects the legibility of the font. At the same time, pen shape is also an important reflection of the legacy of Chinese character writing. Paying full attention to pen shape design is the first and crucial step to do well in Chinese font design.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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