Sketching with Chinese Calligraphy

Sketches and hand drawn paper prototypes have become popular tools – they are quick to make, inexpensive and cannot be mistaken for the final product. When little effort is needed to draw, it is easier to discard drawings and ideas and replace them with new and improved versions. Moreover, during ideation it is important to be able to quickly capture the ideas on paper while they are flowing. As one speeds up the drawing, the sketches may become unclear and harder to interpret. This article illustrates how Chinese calligraphy can serve as inspiration to speed up sketching while maintaining a clear, consistent and attractive style. After introducing the basic principles of Chinese calligraphy, we showcase character elements that resemble user interface components and demonstrate how calligraphy techniques can be used to proportion the overall user interface structure

Metal and Stone, Brush and Ink: Word as Source in the Art of Huang Binhong

Like many of his contemporaries, scholar-artist Huang Binhong (1865-1955) received a classical education with deep foundations in text-based historical learning that engendered creative expression in the form of painting, calligraphy and seal carving. While based on cultural traditions of the past, these scholarly arts were directed at experiencing the present and imagining the future. Calligraphy and painting may be understood as the living embodiment of the artist who is vitally connected to the historical past, whereas the printed impression of words or images carved into stone conveys ideas associated with authenticity, longevity and artistic completion. When combined in a brush-and-ink painting there is an interesting tension between the spiritual and temporal; the historical and contemporary. During his lifetime, Huang Binhong was highly regarded as a scholar, art historian, art editor, collector and connoisseur, as well as an artist. His multiple identities formed an integral part of his creative practice. This paper will discuss aspects of Huang Binhong’s life as a scholar, connoisseur-collector and artist, referring to his writings on seals, first published in the Journal of the National Essence (Guocui xuebao) and his involvement with the Shanghai-based art magazine National Glories of Cathay (Shenzhou guoguang ji). It will also analyse some of Huang’s paintings in which, through colophons, he makes a direct connection between the study of ancient inscriptions in bronze and stone and contemporary creativity. Through this example it is possible to reflect on ways that contemporary Chinese artists have drawn on the mutual interdependence of word and image to create compelling works of experimental art

Encouraging Ethical Behaviour through Design

The phrase social responsibility appears with the word design because of the visual power of design to publicize information and knowledge. Design and social responsibility is a controversial topic in the filed of graphic design because some designers prefer to stay neutral toward social topics around them while other designers encourage utilizing the visual power of design to solve and promote social issues for the purpose of change. Above all, Design and social responsibility is usually limited by three areas: green design, designing for charitable organizations and reframing from designing for companies that either through the process or from their final product do harm to people. In my design work, supported by the investigation of the operational terms of the problem, the articulation of the research question and objectives, the introductory sketching phase, the visual research, the design approaches and the user testing feedback demonstrate a design process that can be utilized by others in the practice of design to be more socially responsible. The findings and outcomes of this research aim to create a practical guide for designers, design students and individuals interested in the filed of design and social responsibility

Volumetric cloud generation using a Chinese brush calligraphy style

Includes bibliographical references.Clouds are an important feature of any real or simulated environment in which the sky is visible. Their amorphous, ever-changing and illuminated features make the sky vivid and beautiful. However, these features increase both the complexity of real time rendering and modelling. It is difficult to design and build volumetric clouds in an easy and intuitive way, particularly if the interface is intended for artists rather than programmers. We propose a novel modelling system motivated by an ancient painting style, Chinese Landscape Painting, to address this problem. With the use of only one brush and one colour, an artist can paint a vivid and detailed landscape efficiently. In this research, we develop three emulations of a Chinese brush: a skeleton-based brush, a 2D texture footprint and a dynamic 3D footprint, all driven by the motion and pressure of a stylus pen. We propose a hybrid mapping to generate both the body and surface of volumetric clouds from the brush footprints. Our interface integrates these components along with 3D canvas control and GPU-based volumetric rendering into an interactive cloud modelling system. Our cloud modelling system is able to create various types of clouds occurring in nature. User tests indicate that our brush calligraphy approach is preferred to conventional volumetric cloud modelling and that it produces convincing 3D cloud formations in an intuitive and interactive fashion. While traditional modelling systems focus on surface generation of 3D objects, our brush calligraphy technique constructs the interior structure. This forms the basis of a new modelling style for objects with amorphous shape

Tigers and the Kishi School of Japanese Painting

"This tenth-century Japanese poem, curiously similar to the western admonition about telling a tiger by its stripes, might be applied to the tradition of tiger painting in Japan -- it is much more than a topography of dots and lines. Tigers were indigenous to China and Korea, but not to Japan. The absence of the real animal, coupled with the mythical associations that the tiger image possessed upon its introduction to Japan in the prehistoric period, posed special problems for the painter. A tiger by Kishi Renzan (1805-1859) in the collections of the Museum of Art and Archaeology of the University of Missouri-Columbia nevertheless succeeds in evoking both traditional attributes of the beast together with a naturalism new to Japanese painting."--First paragraph.Includes bibliographical reference

In Pursuit of Harmony: Calligraphy & Typography

Chinese calligraphy and Western typography have been evolving for around five thousands years. During this time, they have developed quite different characteristics. Compared with the geometrical form and precision of Western printing types, Chinese calligraphy features abstract shapes and spontaneous strokes. These differences result in a gap that prevents a harmonious and organic relationship between them. This project explores the possibilities of combining these two historical visual systems, demonstrates specific methods and approaches for creating compelling formal relationships, and endeavors to establish a friendly, organic and harmonious dialogue between Chinese calligraphy and Western typography. The outcome of this project is a handmade book and a series of posters. The content of them comes from the writings of Lao-Tzu

Tirhal family: A bilingual typeface bridging two worlds

This thesis attempts to show considerations related to typeface design specifically for the use in printed customer materials used in immigration sector. The genre of typefaces used for the government always highlights the importance of legibility. With the massive immigration flow into Europe after the Syrian crisis, it is fundamental for immigration services to provide documents in Arabic language using legible and well-designed typefaces. Having a legible typeface plays a pivotal role for immigrants in helping them to comprehend information about their new surroundings. The specific objective of the thesis is to explore the design of the Migri (Finnish Immigration Services) multilingual materials and determine on how to create a bilingual typeface in Arabic and Latin for use in the governmental sectors aimed at helping immigrants. The thesis sheds light on the methodological processes in harmonization and explores bilingual typefaces. It also investigates typefaces used in the public sector. This study explores the common trends in bi-script typefaces and investigates how these trends came into being. It documents the process on how to create a multilingual typeface family. The final outcome is presented in the form of a bi-script typeface of Arabic and Latin. The goal is to achieve good legibility and a unified visual identity