Revolutionary type: Meet the designer decolonizing Chinese fonts

Typography is a tool, Hui said, but not just for displaying words. Type reflects culture and influences it. “Chinese trends have always lagged by 10 years,” Hui said. “I really want to help the Chinese scene to catch up to the Western or Japanese visual language and culture. I hope Chinese will.” 

“If you have to explain why a typeface is beautiful, then it isn’t.”

Hui, who previously designed the  New York Times’  Chinese logo and a custom typeface for tech giant Tencent, believes that Chinese type design has become stagnant and unoriginal. Most of the fonts on the market have gone through a process of convergent evolution to become blocky and conventional. “There’s no emotion behind them,” Hui to

Hui said that the point of the project is not just an exercise in aesthetics, but an attempt to “decolonize” Chinese type. He intends to take it back to its roots before the influence of Japanese designers, and to free it from the cultural gravity of the mainland, where even typefaces come under the purview of the state. His research and dedicatio