Deciphering Chinese Characters

2017 / Publication . Crowbar Award, Gold in Design Category

Communication through pictograms becomes essential in our daily life as the world becomes more and more a “global village”. When, for instance, many people come together and must move quickly and safely within confined spaces, or must find their way in unfamiliar locations—or when a person needs to understand instructions written on medicine bottles or wayfinding — pictograms become essential. The importance of chinese characters and pictograms worldwide cannot be underestimated.

The topic of this project is about deciphering Chinese characters and by developing new Chinese characters and illustrations based on the formative methods of Oracle Bone script as my inspiration. The purpose is for developing understandable Chinese characters and illustrations to let my audience understand the Chinese culture through the Chinese characters. I have extracted a set of new elements from the oracle bone script for the formation of the Chinese characters and tested the feasibility and readability of the proposed pictogram design methods from my research.

My design solution provides information about the focus of my research which is the 24 solar terms by helping my audience understand what it is about and how it intricately relates to the human body. It also provides a new way of looking at the 24 solar terms with a more visualized input and through the materials and way of reading compared to the olden days, this project will bring upon new light to how people look at the 24 solar terms with a typeface that uniquely represents the tradition.