Revival Typeface Design: A Historian's Manual for Type Design

Millions of carved plates and movable types are not only historical relics of printing but also a massive resource for contemporary typeface design, retaining vibrant artistic value in modern society. Using history as a blueprint, through rigorous and standardized revival and redesign, enriching the contemporary font environment, and exploring the possibilities of typeface design evolution and innovation, so that typefaces from ancient books or metal types can regain vitality in today's printing and typesetting environment, has become a consensus in the global typeface design community. To summarize their thoughts and practical processes in reviving typeface design and research, Riccardo Olocco and Michele Patanè, typeface design scholars from the University of Reading, co-authored "Designing Type Revivals: Handbook for a Historical Approach to Typeface Design." This book fully elucidates standardized methods for in-depth study of typeface and glyph history and applies them to Latin alphabet design. The authors hope that through this book, an easily replicable practical model can be constructed, inspiring subsequent practitioners, students, and scholars to engage in deeper critical thinking.

"Designing Type Revivals: Handbook for a Historical Approach to Typeface Design" encapsulates years of research, practice, and workshop teaching experience from seasoned typeface designers and educators. It serves as a practical guide for Western typeface revival design. Starting from understanding the essence of the revival concept, and using the authors' real design project – the revival of the De Aetna Roman typeface – as a thread, it guides readers to systematically master the methodology of revival typeface design, from sampling blueprint glyphs and analyzing glyph metrics to creating computer fonts. The Chinese edition of this book is co-edited by Chen Zhu, head of notadesign, and Gerry Leonidas, Professor of Typography at the University of Reading and a judge for the Latin category of the Founder Type Award, with He Shiyang, a typeface designer at FounderType, as the translator.

The Chinese edition of "Designing Type Revivals: Handbook for a Historical Approach to Typeface Design" specifically invited four renowned Chinese typeface designers – Liu Yuli, Wang Wen, Yin Yehang, and Zheng Chuyang – to contribute articles, jointly exploring practical experiences in Chinese typeface revival, forming a special topic "Discussions on Chinese Typeface Revival Design." In this book, Wang Wen, Design Director of FounderType, takes the revival of Founder Han Wen Zheng Kai as an example to deeply analyze the technical and artistic challenges encountered in Chinese character revival design.