Introduction: A comment on the current state of typeface design for non-Latin scripts, summarising the points made on “Going Global” [next four slides]
Distinguishing between designing typefaces for documents integrating more than one script, and designing typefaces for scripts that the designer is unfamiliar with, for overwhelmingly single-script use.
In the case of new single-script typefaces, the main challenge has been the adaptation of script complexity to the limitations of type-making and typesetting systems developed for another context.
Commercial pressures (time allocation, budget limits, lack of sufficient clarity at the project definition) and the variable access to trustworthy information and feedback jeopardise projects.
Distinguishing between one column of a script next to, or opposite to, one in another script (e.g. in a translated text) and embedded use (e.g. a word or a phrase in one script within sentences in another).
Features from the original script can be shoehorned onto the “secondary” script. These may include vertical proportions, stroke dimensions and modulation, terminal formation, handling of punctuation, and so on.
Latinisation: the design of a non-Latin script using design patterns and even specific formal elements from the Latin, usually with a mismatch between the typographic and stylistic connotations of the two scripts (e.g. “modern” ).
Typographicisation: the adaptation of a script that has forms and behaviour determined by written forms to the constraints of a type-making and typesetting system. This script may often be used on its own.
Limitations examples: character sets, many-to-many substitutions. “Typewriter” fonts: from actual type- writers, to early digital. Of marginal formal quality, developed under extreme limitations, but still influential.
Character sets change over time, across documents, and communities. The “definitive” versions might not exist. Intensely context-dependent substitutions. Changes to a script across generations.
Type family conventions for weight / width / style from Latin typefaces that do not transfer easily to another script. Communities sharing a complex script, but not a language, an orthography, or international visibility.
The variability of radii and counter shapes are most likely more complex than in the Latin; stroke dimensions tend to respond to these factors. Transferring the logic of the ductus into the typographic forms.
The fewer the existing relevant typefaces for a script, the more pressure for new ones to relate to them. Conventional ways to expand a type family may not apply to a non-Latin script, requiring innovative thinking.
Typefaces respond to and reflect the range from language preservation to mainstream textual communication, to imported / novel genres that express aspirational classes and generational identification.
As a typeface project develops, how do we capture the design decisions and the knowledge generated? And how is this built upon across projects? Our current workflows aim at final outputs, not capturing and analysing processes.
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