Modern Design Expression Techniques -- Basic Art Design

Author: Zhao Maosheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1994-04-01
Features: If one seriously analyzes modern graphic design, it will be found that among various design elements, the design of typography is particularly important. First, typography must have personality, originality, and novelty. At the same time, it should be closely related to other design elements and align with the design content. Generally speaking, a poster may lack images but cannot be without text; wherever text is present, typography must be designed. Therefore, the design and appreciation of typography are essential skills for every graphic designer. Today, more and more people are paying attention to and caring about typography, hoping for more new fonts to be available for use. Of course, they do not doubt the perfection and excellence of traditional Chinese fonts such as Song, Hei, Fangsong, and Kai. They are not satisfied with the idea that a wide variety of content—such as government announcements, commercial advertisements, novels, poems, prose, and children's stories—can only be expressed using just these four fonts. Thus, typography design work is both important and urgent. Currently, there are a vast number of Latin fonts, almost too many to count. However, Chinese fonts have seen limited variations and are still unsatisfactory. There are both objective and subjective reasons for this. Objective: Many countries use Latin fonts, and most of them are developed industrial and commercial nations. Additionally, the number of Latin characters is small—only a few dozen when you include uppercase, lowercase, Arabic numerals, and punctuation marks. In contrast, Chinese characters have at least several thousand, making the workload ratio one hundred to one. Subjective: For many years, the design community in our country has not placed enough emphasis on the study of typography, and few people even know about typography design. In fact, typography design is an integral part of human material civilization, a field where human wisdom and talent are applied and developed. It is also a process that fully expresses and promotes the general aesthetic norms and ideals of different eras, constituting an important part of human artistic culture. This article is a summary and collection based on teaching, so whether it is the classification of typography design, case analysis, or work appreciation, it clearly reflects teaching traces. At the end of each section, there are also methods and requirements for practice, providing beginners in design with a simpler and more correct approach to learning and training. Since typography theory has been continuously evolving and is still in the process of exploration, this article is far from complete in all aspects. We sincerely hope for the help and corrections of gentlemen who are dedicated to this field of exploration. During the writing process, we were greatly assisted by my colleague Wang Hongwei and the editor-in-chief of this book, Zhang Dongming. We extend our gratitude to them here.