May 3, 2004

• Chinese and Fonts

  
  

  This weekend I walked by a Chinese church I’d never seen before.  Out front it had a huge banner, maybe 20 feet across, with some saying printed in .

  
  

  I think that is the ugliest banner font possible.  It looks like an Xtools editor while you’re composing a xanga entry, or maybe someone’s first PowerPoint slide.  But I’ve seen this font used for a lot of Chinese church media: websites, bulletins, signs, etc…  It makes me cringe and want to organize a group of Chinese-American graphic artists to help these style-blind churches.

  
  

  The ironic thing is: the Chinese historically have written in calligraphy so you’d think we’d be sensitive to font attractiveness.  Maybe the Cultural Revolution or moving to the U.S. has drained it away from us.  I think it’s the former.  When I see printed Chinese text on newspapers and food packaging, most of those fronts are pretty ugly, too.  And I don’t even read Chinese!

  
  

  Arabs — now they have cool printed fonts.

  • 12:46 am
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