Studying The Beginning And The Evolution Of Regular Script In The Ancient Chinese Prints

As the status of Font Design is rising constantly in the field of Chinese Characters Study, designers are becoming more and more interested in it. Designers do not have enough understanding of the context, values and cultural background of Chinese character fonts these days due to the popularity of information technology and digital media. It is a universal problem, that researchers focus on the practice, and ignore the theory.Exploitation and application of Chinese printing characters should be based on the theory of knowing Chinese characters’ background. With this knowledge it is possible to design new and modern characters to meet today’s needs.Font Design seems mysterious, but it is an integral part of our culture, and at the centre of it is the regular script, which is not to be underestimated in the developing of the whole Chinese characters’ status.The purpose of this study is to research the beginning and the evolution of regular script in the ancient Chinese prints. This includes researching its basic strokes and script font style, analysis and comparison of the similarities, and the differences in the evolution process of regular script, looking to find the regularities.With this knowledge we can find a way to combine new technology and new thinking to promote the design and application of regular script. In order to make a theoretical support for contemporary font design, we need to look at: the calligraphy and the characters in the ancient block printing to guide the application of font design; trying to build the framework of this branch of regular script; finding out the evolution rules by system carding and analysis of the writing strokes; the change of structure and the aesthetic thoughts; trying to summarize the method of font design, using the historic method; inheriting Chinese character tradition.The research methods of this thesis are historical literature research, field investigation, theoretical analysis method and the comparison method.