Rotterdam Chinatown -Visual Identity-Typeface

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Book This is a handbook about a new font that I made basing on the research about "Chinese" people in Rotterdam.



Story These people moved to the Netherland and lived here for more than 10 years, Their next generation borned in Holland, holding Dutch, speaking dutch, eating bread with butter, love cheese and milk... There is a community where people sharing the same culture background, speaking similar mother langrage, and still be strongly influnced by their original eating hobit. I am from China and study as an exchange student at WdKA(Rotterdam) and I found a very interesting comunity in Rotterdam which called Chinatown.



These group of people they are originally from China (Mainland or HK), And lived in Rotterdam for a long time. They speaking Dutch, holding Dutch ID, reading Dutch news and having Dutch friends and already use to the Dutch culture.

Dutch or European people see them as Chinese but when they back to China, Chinese won’t see them as Chinese any more. Will they identity themselves as European, Dutch, Chinese or Dutch Chinese. And how they understand of China.



Strokes CJKV strokes are the calligraphic strokes needed to write the Chinese characters in regular script used in East Asia. CJK strokes are the classified set of line patterns that may be arranged and combined to form Chinese characters (also known as Hanzi) in use in China, Japan, Korea, and to a lesser extent in Vietnam.

Types CJK strokes are an attempt to identify and classify all singlestroke components that can be used to write Han radicals. There are some thirty distinct types of strokes recognized in Chinese characters, some of which are compound strokes made from basic strokes. The compound strokes comprise more than one movement of the writing instrument, and many of these have no agreed-upon name.



Basic strokes A basic stroke is a single calligraphic mark moving in one direction across a writing surface. The following table lists a selection of basic strokes divided into two stroke groups: simple and combining. "Simple strokes" (such as HĂŠng "Horizontal" and Di n "Dot") can be written alone. "Combining strokes" (such as ZhĂŠ "Break" and Gou "Hook") never occur alone, but must be paired with at least one other stroke forming a compound stroke. Thus, they are not in themselves individual strokes.

Chinese people have used this system to write Chinese characters for centuries and perfected it. On the Left, you’ll see the different types of strokes or lines in Chinese.


Eight basic strokes.


During the Christmas holiday I travled to Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam and I found out a very interesting thing happened. The font that you can see on the picture it's became a "syble" of Asia and China. I understand why non-asia people think in that way as the very strong brush strokes give people a misunderstand feeling and think it's a connection of Chinese typeface.


Chinese people start learning how to write cherecter base on the from that you can see on this pag. We call it Tian Zi Ge or Mi Zi Ge for giving a bisic stander on keeping the hight, width into a average level.



Comepare to Chinese character western typeface also have a bisic rule on writing, but not strict as Chinese Mi Zi Ge. Especially the width levle in a font, eg, I, W, K, O




Chinese people in Netherlands They are from China, live in Netherland, life style be stronly influence by Dutch Culture but still keeping the "Chinese version" of their life. They mix with Ducth culture and Chinese culture.


li

xing kai

kai

wei bei

biao song

song

hei

Writing tool 's changing influnced the look of the font but the constractions of building up Chinese cheracter stil stay the same.



























































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