Based in New York City, TienMin Liao designs Latin typefaces for retail and works with brands and agencies to create custom wordmarks. She also specializes in wordmark localization for the East Asia market. Her work has been recognized by TDC, Tokyo TDC, ADC, and Morisawa Type Design. She was named one of the Ascenders by TDC.
Your project “Bilingual Lettering” develops around more than 50 Kanji - Latin pairing studies, visualizing the possibility of a wide common design space between these two different scripts, through the customization of the word “TYPE (type)” and “字”. What experience did you get from this?
In this Bilingual Lettering essay, I tried to figure out a systematic way to “pair” Latin and Kanji through a series of sketch exercises. From these exercises was that the type doesn’t always need to be always the same visually, but they should share the same personality.
Is this sort of “visual translation” always possible and meaningful? Do you think that there can be a common design space for different scripts, or can it become a forced appropriation?
It depends. Sometime it’s meaningful to have them “look” similar, but in some cases, it doesn’t work. We should always look for the similarity not just visually, but more importantly culturally. For instance, if I am designing a movie title for a story set in 2000 years ago, I would probably use the type style from the time era for both scripts, instead of forcing one to look like the other, because in this scenario, the historical and cultural reference is more important than the actual visual style. In this case, I could pair Trajan with Lishu style even though they are visually different. In the Bilingual Lettering essay, I propose a few approaches to pair Latin and Kanji. I hope this could inspire other scripts paring:
Approach 1: Pairing with the existing type genre
Approach 2: Coordinating styles
A. Using the feature as decorative elements
B. Imagine drawing with the same tools
C. Treat it as a graphic
Approach 1 is not about making Latin and Kanji look identical, but focuses on pairing them with the appropriate style for the context, similar to the movie title example above. Meanwhile, Approach 2 can be useful when a project requires both scripts to be visually similar and the context allows for it. Ultimately, the choice of approach depends on the specific project and requirements.
"We should always look for the similarity not just visually, but more importantly culturally."
The exploration in Kanji-Latin pairings of “Bilingual Lettering” follows a very clear methodology that you structured in “Observation, Making, Consistency and Alternatives”. Do you think that this process can be adapted also for other script combinations? Are there any related projects and experiences you want to show us?
“Observation, Making, Consistency, and Alternatives” are the section titles in which I structure the essay. I think they can be interpreted as below:
Observation: this section emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical context and cultural nuances of the scripts being used.
Making: this section explores general approaches to pairing the two scripts.
Consistency: this section, I listed out the perimeters and elements that the two scripts can share with other.
Alternatives: this section encourages designers to explore other possibilities and
different solutions.
2022's TDC Ascender's branding, lettering commission by Dazzle Studio
According to Dr. Nadine Chahine, Latin type-design space, when compared to the Arabic one, is like a luxuriant forest, crowded with many different trees and plants, whereas the latter is like a desert oasis, that has still to colonize the wide desert around it. What about Hanzi and Kanji? How big is the space for innovation and design innovations (weights, display variants, and so on) given the extreme visual complexity of this writing system?
For Chinese and Japanese typefaces, there are still a lot of potential and possibilities that can be explored. Due to the large number of glyphs required, completing a full typeface is a challenging undertaking, which means that there are fewer available typefaces than in the Latin script. However, this scarcity of typefaces has led to a growing demand for custom Chinese/Japanese lettering and wordmarks.
This interview is part of the Type Trends 2023 Lookbook / Vol 5: The counterspaces – Typography in the Age of Black Swans
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