A Study In Modern Chinese Text Image And Typographic Norms

The realisation of a text image is at the core of Chinese typography. Two most important goals of Chinese typographic design are the realisation of an even, legible, functional text image, and a well orchestrated readable hierarchical system of information,—an achievement of both legibility and readability.Unlike Latin typography which is mainly driven by the relationship between justification and hyphenation, and line-breaking, in realising any desired text image, Chinese typography instead must strike a balance between punctuation spacing, prohibition rules of punctuation marks, paragraph justification and the maintaining of natural setting of Chinese characters.Punctuation, spacing, alignment and typeface are united and become the actual typographic rules driven by a punctuation spacing strategy. These rules are the typographic norms and conventions which survived the transformation from letterpress to digital typesetting, and deserve to be fully investigated and developed further in our age.Rediscovering and understanding these typographic rules are a point of departure for a Chinese typographic language and provides a significant approach to typographic development in an age of electronic publishing and screen-based reading.This thesis also surveys the principles behind the typographic rules of modern Chinese,—Punctuation, Spacing, Alignment and the choice of typeface. From micro typography, to medial and macro typography, these principles of typography are universally applicable.