Towards Infinite Styles: Do We Even Need Fonts?

1. Intro

Let me start the story, by talking about our daily activities as type designers.
Many of us spend our time balancing black and white, adjusting curves, and moving the nodes of Bézier contours.
It almost feels like our careers are defined by manipulating these curves.
We all know that the job of designing types is about shaping letters, not just moving nodes.
But right now, it seems like we’re primarily focused on such an activity of moving the nodes.

In today’s digital typography, most of the time when we are designing typefaces,
we’re actually creating fonts made up of collections of Bézier contours.
Of course, we also put metrics and OpenType features into them.

And ever since we started moving from paper to digital media,
the amount of text we read in the form of digital typefaces has been increasing.
The shift from handwriting and hand-lettering to digital typography is happening all around the world.
We see clear and sharp letters everywhere, every day.
This may make us, as type designers, feel privileged,
as we are the experts shaping what people will read.
But on the contrary, the audience is losing access to the variety of styles that used to come from handwriting or hand-letterings.

We live in an age where typography dominates the visual forms of written languages.
But should we just accept the current situation as it is?
From certain perspectives, we are actually trapped by fonts.

I will start this section with one of my favorite masterpieces.
Zhang Chaobin’s project of developing a cursive Chinese typeface, has always been a great charm to me.
Behind his project, lies extensive research of possible letterforms, statistical analysis, and the construction of a design system aimed at preserving the fluidity of the cursive script.
These endeavor highlights the complexities involved in adapting traditional calligraphy into digital fonts.

Although I have long been fascinated by such typefaces,
I keep asking myself, why do we have to run into these?
I mean, we spend considerable effort into all these OpenType features, and tweaking the design,
Just to make various styles, as well as complicated scripts, compatible with current digital typography standards.
Why don’t we just encourage people to write, and share the beautiful letters as plain images instead of confining them to predefined typefaces?

By asking, why work so hard,
I mean, type designers keep their explorations on complicated design,
handling all those shaping and metrics issue to set the letters beautifully all together,
as well as OpenType features to add variations.

And speaking of fitting a cursive script into a digital font,
besides our previous example of a Chinese cursive script typeface,
this issue extends to many other languages and script styles that struggle within the constraints of digital typography, as well
- With CJK scripts, designing a font itself, requires preparing thousands of characters in advance.
- For Arabic, you need to implement the “illusion of continuous movement”.
- And for Brahmic, such as Dēvanāgarī, the complex character shaping issues need careful handling.

While the question itself may seem dumb.
It suggests our tendency to take the existing typography paradigm for granted,
since that’s how the world evolved to be.
However, we can still find out a good reason to justify the current situation,
without digging into the history of typography.
The popularization of digital typography actually democratized the ability to write in beautiful letters.
Everyone today only need to purchase a font to become good calligraphers and lettering artists, which is undeniably a blessing, a blessing that technology brought us.
We, type designers, should also feel proud of it,
as we are the masters that know the beauty of writing,
and it is us that empowered people to create visually appealing text.