In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters developed into Da Zhuan. The development of seal script has produced two characteristics: first, the lines with uneven thickness in the early days became even and soft, and the lines they drew with utensils were very concise and vivid; Second, standardization, the glyph structure tends to be neat, and gradually deviates from the original shape of the picture, laying the foundation for the square characters.
Later, Li Si, the prime minister of Qin Dynasty, simplified Da Zhuan and changed it to Xiao Zhuan. Small seal script not only simplifies the shape of big seal script, but also achieves the perfection of lineation and standardization, almost completely divorced from pictures and characters, and has become a neat, harmonious and very beautiful square font which is basically rectangular. However, Xiao Zhuan also has its own fundamental shortcoming, that is, its lines are very inconvenient to write with a pen, so almost at the same time, a kind of official script with flat sides was produced.
By the Han Dynasty, the official script had developed to a mature stage, and the readability and writing speed of Chinese characters had been greatly improved. After Li Shu, it evolved into Cao Zhang, and now it is grass. In the Tang dynasty, there was Weeds, which expressed the writer's thoughts and feelings with a pen. Subsequently, regular script (also known as original script), a combination of official script and cursive script, became popular in the Tang Dynasty. The print we use today evolved from regular script. Between regular script and cursive script is a running script, which is fluent in writing and flexible in using a pen. It is said that it was invented by Liu Desheng in Han Dynasty, and it is still the font used in our daily writing today.
In the Song Dynasty, with the development of printing, block printing was widely used, and Chinese characters were further improved and developed, resulting in a new type of calligraphy-Songti printing font. After the invention of printing, the carving knife used for lettering had a far-reaching influence on the glyph of Chinese characters, resulting in a kind of printing font with fine horizontal and thick vertical, which was eye-catching and easy to read, and was later called Song Style. There are two kinds of fonts for the moment: fat imitation face, Liu style, thin imitation European style and dangerous style. Among them, the strokes of Yan and Liu are towering, with some characteristics of horizontal, thin and vertical. In the Ming Dynasty, between Qin Long and Wanli, it changed from Song style to Ming style, with fine strokes and square fonts. It turned out that at that time, a kind of Hongwu style with thin horizontal and thick vertical was popular among the people, and this font was used for the title cards of official posts, lanterns, notices, private stones, ancestral halls and other gods. Later, some book carvers created a non-face and non-European skin silhouette in the process of imitating Hongwu's style. Especially because the strokes of this font are horizontal and vertical, it is really easy to engrave. It is different from seal script, official script, original script and cursive script, unique, fresh and pleasing to the eye. Therefore, it has been widely used since16th century and has become a very popular main printing font. It's also called Song Style, and it's also called lead font.
In Chinese characters, all kinds of fonts formed in different historical periods have their own distinctive artistic characteristics. For example, seal script is simple and elegant, official script is static and dynamic, rich in decoration, fast in cursive script, compact in structure, neat and beautiful in regular script, easy to read and write, practical, diverse in style and different in personality.
The evolution of Chinese characters is from pictographic pictures to linear symbols, strokes adapted to brush writing and printed fonts convenient for carving. Its evolution provides rich inspiration for China's font design. In character design, if we can give full play to the characteristics and elegant demeanor of various fonts of Chinese characters, we will certainly be able to design exquisite works with ingenious application and unique conception.
Second, the evolution process of historical figures Chinese characters have changed for more than 6000 years, and its evolution process is:
1 Oracle Bone Inscriptions (Shang) 2 bronze inscription (Zhou) 3 seal script (Qin) 4 official script (Han) 5 regular script (Wei and Jin dynasties) 6 running script (cursive script)
Judging from the earliest written materials that can be seen at present-Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, Chinese characters have a history of 3000 years. Because Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a fairly mature writing system, we can infer that Chinese characters must have appeared as far back as 3,000 years ago. The development of Chinese characters can be divided into two main stages. From Oracle Bone Inscriptions to seal script is a stage; Judging from the official script of Qin and Han dynasties, there is still a stage. The former belongs to the category of ancient Chinese characters and the latter belongs to the category of modern Chinese characters. Generally speaking, the form of modern Chinese characters has not changed much from official script to today.
Judging from the relationship between Chinese characters and Chinese, Chinese characters are a kind of morpheme words. As far as the structure of Chinese characters is concerned, Chinese characters are a writing system composed of ideographic, phonetic (pictographic and phonetic) and symbols that neither ideographic nor phonetic.
Chinese characters originated from pictures. In the early stage of Chinese characters, the shape of pictographic characters is directly related to the meaning of morphemes it represents. Although each word has its own fixed pronunciation, the glyph itself is not a phonetic symbol, which is different from the pinyin letters. The pronunciation of hieroglyphics is transmitted to it through the morphemes it represents. With the evolution of glyphs, pictographs are becoming less and less pictographs. As a result, the glyph loses its original connection with the morpheme it represents. At this time, the glyph itself is neither phonetic nor semantic, and becomes an abstract symbol. If all morphemes in Chinese are represented by such symbols that neither express sound nor meaning, then Chinese characters can be said to be pure symbolic characters. But this is not the case. Chinese characters can be divided into single words and combined words. Only letter combinations are purely symbolic characters. Combination characters are composed of single characters. Structurally speaking, compound words are one level higher than single words. Because a single word that constitutes a combined word is itself a symbol, when it is a part of a combined word, it participates as a meaningful "word". Combination characters can be divided into the following three categories:
① pictophonetic characters. Pictophonetic characters are composed of two parts: ideographic sound and phonetic sound. For pictophonetic characters with the simplest structure, pictophonetic characters and homophonic characters are used as characters. As an integral part of pictophonetic characters, these letter combinations are phonetic and meaningful characters. But the shape only takes its meaning, not its sound, such as the "bird" next to the word "pigeon"; The phonetic side only takes the sound, but does not take the meaning. For example, due to the evolution of the meaning and pronunciation of the radical "nine" of the word "pigeon", some pictophonetic characters have lost the function of expressing meaning or pronunciation. For example, "ball" was originally the name of a jade, so it was shaped with "jade". Now the word "ball" doesn't refer to jade, and this shape has no function. Another example is the word "sea", which originally used "every" as the sound. Due to the change of pronunciation, the pronunciation of "sea" and "plum" is far from each other now, and the "plum" beside the sound is useless. Sometimes, the form and sound have lost their original functions, such as "giving, waiting, short". This kind of characters can no longer be regarded as pictophonetic characters.
2 Fit and understand words. The ancients said, "Military strategists must contend" and "people keep their word." This explanation is wrong for the words "nothing" and "letter". However, there are indeed such words in the Chinese character system, such as "incorrect is crooked" and "bad is bad". This kind of words is characterized by combining the meaning of radicals to express the meaning of the whole combined word. There are few such words, only a few examples.
There is no clear boundary between pictophonetic characters and non-pictophonetic characters. At the beginning of word-making, pictophonetic characters are not necessarily close to their pronunciation. With the development of modern Chinese characters, this difference is even greater. Some people count more than 7500 modern Chinese characters. As far as the pronunciation of Putonghua is concerned, less than 5% of compound words are completely homophonic (initials, finals and tones are the same). About 10% initials have the same vowel but different tones. Only one vowel is the same, accounting for about 20%. If only the first two categories are regarded as pictophonetic words, then pictophonetic words only account for 15% of popular words. If the above three categories are regarded as pictophonetic characters, pictophonetic characters will probably account for 35% of popular Chinese characters. If the standard is relaxed, or pictophonetic characters are determined completely according to their origins, the percentage of pictophonetic characters in popular words will be much higher.
Legend has it that Cangjie created characters, which were originally created.
Wen Tao in primitive times is the embryonic form of China characters.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin and Shang Dynasties is the real writing of China.
Later, there was a bronze inscription (also called Zhong Dingwen)
Shi Guwen in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period
Bian Xiao in Qin and Han Dynasties
At the end of Qin Dynasty, official script became popular in Dujian.
Cursive script prevailed in Han Dynasty.
Regular script prevailed in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Third, find the evolution diagram of Chinese characters, each font has 20 characters 1. oracle bone script
The earliest and most complete ancient Chinese characters discovered by China. Also known as "Yin Ruins Characters" and "Yin Qi", it is the characters carved on tortoise shell and beast bones in Shang Dynasty.
2. Big seal script
In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters developed into Da Zhuan. The big seal is for the later small seal. In a broad sense, Da Zhuan includes Xiao Zhuan, pre-Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions and six-country scripts. The original seal script is generally considered as "Shi Guwen".
3. Xiao zhuan
Also known as "Qin Zhuan". During the Qin Dynasty, Li Si was ordered to unify the characters, which was called Xiao Zhuan. It was in the Qin dynasty.
4. Official script
In the process of "writing in the same language", Qin Shihuang ordered Li Si to create Xiao Zhuan, and also adopted the official script compiled by Cheng Miao. Official script is basically evolved from seal script, which originated in Qin dynasty and prevailed in Han dynasty.
5. Regular script
Song Xuanhe's Book Score holds that regular script evolved from ancient Li. Born in the late Han Dynasty, it grew up in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and flourished in Sui and Tang Dynasties. It has become a modern Chinese character font with the widest application range and the longest use history.
6. cursive script
A Chinese character with simple structure and continuous strokes. Formed in the Han Dynasty, it evolved on the basis of official script for the convenience of writing. There are Cao Zhang, Cao Jin and Crazy Grass. Weeds appeared in the Tang Dynasty. The representative works of Weeds, such as Abdominal Pain by Zhang Xu in the Tang Dynasty and Autobiographical Postscript by Huai Su, are all existing treasures.
The above 1-5 are arranged in production order. However, the cursive script ranked sixth came into being earlier than the regular script.
Four. Font design: Summarize several typical design methods according to practice. Introduction to Polo's article: Chinese characters have a long history of about 5,000 years in China, and the formation of fonts has also undergone a long development and evolution.
Font design is an important part of graphic design, and it is also the most perfect way to express the richest effect with the simplest elements, which is both functional and connotative. Since the German Bauhaus design theory was introduced to China, with the development of movable type printing and laser phototypesetting technology, Chinese characters have a long history of about 5,000 years in China, and the formation of fonts has experienced a long development and evolution.
Font design is an important part of graphic design, and it is also the most perfect way to express the richest effect with the simplest elements, which is both functional and connotative. With the development of movable type printing and laser phototypesetting technology, China fonts have experienced and assumed an important historical role since the introduction of the German Bauhaus design theory to China.
1. Methods and the basic strokes of Chinese characters include eight kinds (namely, point, horizontal, vertical, left, press, fold, hook and lift), and the task of font designers is to generate ever-changing shapes on this basis. Font design mainly includes two parts. The first is the shape of strokes, just like people's appearance, which is the most distinctive external feature between people and between words.
The second is structure, just like human bones, which determines the overall impression of fonts. With these two parts, a font is distinctive enough.
At the same time, they can communicate with each other. Blending the same group of strokes into different structures can generate another font with different styles; On the other hand, if you insert different strokes into the same structure, you will get another new word.
As the appearance of fonts, the shape of strokes is more recognizable and often more important. As the cradle of modern design, Bauhaus theory advocates the functionalization and rationalization of design. As a font designer, we need to find out two things, one is where the design idea comes from, and the other is where the design is applied.
Font design is different from calligraphy, so it is very important to master the methods in order to emphasize practicality and commerciality. The target market should be given priority, and the entry point is very important, not just based on interest.
Being good at observing the market and always keeping a keen eye on the application field can effectively combine design with the market. Targeted design can have clear goals, clear thinking and improve work efficiency.
The second step is to find the corresponding materials and sources. Any inspiration is not imaginary, which is untenable. There must be relevant visual experience as accumulation, and laws and methods can be used for reference and follow. From the perspective of graphic composition, most advertising fonts are designed with concrete things or abstract graphics, such as paper-cut style and fat baby style.
Font design should grasp the degree between inheritance and innovation. Standing on the shoulders of giants, progress is qualitative improvement, while aimless creation can only be jumping around, never reaching the shoulders of giants. This is a kind of inheritance, take its essence and discard its dross.
Song, Imitation, Black and Kai can continuously develop new font varieties, which lies in the mutual promotion and integration in the long-term accumulation process, resulting in excellent fonts such as Lanting Black, Black, Black and Northern Wei regular script. Regardless of Chinese and western languages, calligraphy or calligraphy, I can take its essence for my use, and make it glow with a new look through the promotion and development of personal aesthetic perception.
Good things should not be covered by years, and art should not be restricted by the state. Nowadays, people's aesthetic needs are diverse, and this is also the reason why the common retro style is enduring.
Of course, inheritance and reference must be the product of personal purification and transformation, which conforms to the design ideas and fashion trends of the new era. Compared with the design flexibility of logo fonts, thousands of fonts have stricter requirements on design scale. How to follow the simple and unified law to evolve a rich, harmonious and distinctive style is a process that a set of mature fonts must go through.
Font is different from graphic design, and it is a long and complicated production cycle from inspiration flash to concept forming. Designers make specifications and lead the team to complete the whole font after several months or even a year, which requires both creativity and hard-working endurance. This is a hard and challenging job.
I have been groping for experience since I designed the first font. Although there is no shortcut, I can try different ways or starting points. Here are some typical design methods combined with practice. 1. Calligraphy Inscription China's calligraphy is extensive and profound, with a long history and a very deep mass base and development resources.
Calligraphy is the origin of China's font evolution. The so-called "model", that is, regular script, is the model and source of later printed fonts such as Song Dynasty and imitation Song Dynasty. Inscriptions or ancient books are unique fonts taken from calligraphers of past dynasties. One way to make them into a font library is to write by calligraphers and scan the manuscripts into a computer to adapt them, such as calligraphy.
Or copy the pen-shaped part of the original post, and restore it as much as possible according to its structure, so as to truly reproduce the historical sense of the font, such as Jubao imitating Song Dynasty. Another method is to improve the style of the original book and create a brand-new font style, which belongs to secondary creation.
The third "hanging needle for printing" method I designed comes from the inscription "Tianfa Shenbei" in the Song and Wu Dynasties. His calligraphy is based on Qin Li's style and Zhou Shu's circle. Difficult to get up, it means official script, hanging like a hanging needle, while maintaining a tight seal structure.
The fierce gas constitutes the unique style of this monument, so it is called "hanging needle seal gas", and because of its sharp edge, it is also called "leek leaf seal". If the combination of seal script and seal script breaks the inherent definition of seal script, the design inspiration of hanging needle seal edge also comes from this.
Take the characteristics of hard and sharp, dense on the top and sparse on the bottom, and the font is slender, hanging down like a steel needle. Seal script is complicated and difficult to read, so it must be greatly converted into simplified Chinese characters, and it is difficult to just follow the original tablet style.
Positioning as a variant of seal script is intended to retain the charm of seal script, such as hanging, symmetry and regularity, and to integrate the stroke characteristics of official script and regular script into one furnace, which is actually the unity of the three styles and creates a new style. At the same time, it enhances the characteristics of "leek leaf seal" and improves the dull and fierce style of the original inscription.
Combine traditional calligraphy with modern vocabulary, pursue elegant, soft and elegant artistic beauty, which is retro but easy to read. Distinctive features, suitable for classical or fantasy style advertising, books, movies, video games.
Calligraphy fonts have a profound cultural background, which needs to unify the overall level of the production team.
Five, the historical world ancient cuneiform, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, hieroglyphics, Phoenician characters.
Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform characters in the two river basins, Phoenician letters, Oracle Bone Inscriptions in China.
1.( 1) hieroglyphics: This kind of writing is one of the oldest in the world. Because it is a kind of writing that uses symbols to describe the image of objective objects, that is, the so-called "painting into its objects", we are used to calling it hieroglyphics.
(2) Cuneiform writing: Sumerians invented writing almost at the same time as Egyptians. They used sharpened reeds as pens, carved words on the clay blank, and then dried the clay blank to become clay tablets. This kind of writing carved on the clay tablet is called "cuneiform writing" because of its sharp wedge shape. Because of its wide use, people call it "Latin in the ancient East".
(3) Phoenician alphabet: The hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt never developed into letters, but after many times of evolution, their shapes gradually simplified and became letters. Its 24 monosyllabic symbols are similar to letters. In 2000 BC, the Phoenicians on the east coast of the Mediterranean created 22 pinyin letters under the influence of Egyptian characters and West Asian characters. The ancient Greeks created the Greek alphabet on the basis of the Phoenician alphabet. On the basis of the Greek alphabet, the Latin alphabet of the Latin people in Rome and its surrounding areas was formed. Latin letters are the most common letters in the world.
2.( 1) The hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt are the basis of pinyin, which has an influence on the development of world culture.
(2) The cuneiform characters in the two river basins have made great contributions to the people of all ethnic groups in West Asia and to human civilization.
(3) The influence of Phoenician characters on pinyin characters: The greatest contribution of ancient Phoenicians to human culture was to create the first set of pinyin letters in the world. On the basis of learning the Phoenician alphabet, the Greeks created a more complete Greek alphabet, from which later Latin developed. Greek letters and Latin letters together form the basis of modern European letters.
3. Oracle Bone Inscriptions: the name of an ancient script in China, and the oldest existing script in China. Also known as Wen Qi, tortoise shell script or tortoise shell animal bone script. Yin people used tortoise shells and animal bones for divination. After divination, the time of divination, the name of the diviner and the things divined are engraved on the side of divination with a knife, and some even engrave the good and bad luck that will come true in a few days. Scholars call this kind of record Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and this kind of writing is Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Oracle Bone Inscriptions was found in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan Province, and it is a relic of Shang King Pan Geng who moved to Yin and died in China. Later, it was also unearthed in the Shang Dynasty sites in Zhengzhou and Luoyang, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Western Zhou Dynasty was also found in the sites in Changping, Beijing and Joo Won?, Shaanxi.
6. What is font design? Character design refers to the overall careful arrangement of characters according to the laws of visual design. It is the product of human production and practice, and gradually matures with the development of human civilization. To design a character, we must have a general understanding of its history and evolution. Font design has related applications in various mobile phone platforms.
Advantages:
The difference between a well-designed standard font and a common printed font is that, in addition to the difference in appearance, it is more important to design according to the personality of the enterprise or brand, as well as the planned shape, thickness, connection and configuration between words, and unified modeling. They are all carefully and rigorously planned, which are more beautiful and distinctive than ordinary fonts.
In the implementation of corporate image strategy, many enterprises and brand names tend to be similar, and the font logo design of unified enterprise names and logos has formed a new trend. The name and logo of the enterprise are unified. Although there is only one design element, it has two functions to achieve the effect of conveying information synchronously by vision and hearing.
Extended data:
Principles and styles of role design
1, beautiful and feminine. The font is beautiful and fresh, and the lines are smooth, giving people a gorgeous and soft feeling. This font is suitable for women's cosmetics, accessories, daily necessities, service industries and other themes.
2. Steady and straight. The font is regular and full of strength, giving people a concise and hearty sense of modernity and a strong visual impact. This personalized font is suitable for topics such as mechanical technology.
3. Lively and interesting. The fonts are lively, the rhythm is vivid, and the colors are rich and bright, giving people a feeling of vitality. This personalized font is suitable for children's products, sports and leisure, fashion products and other themes.
4, vigorous and simple. The font is unpretentious and full of ancient charm, which can bring people a sense of nostalgia. This personalized font is suitable for traditional products, folk art and other themes.