TYPOShanghai – A walk on typography in urban space
Wherever you look—visual information of literality is everywhere: Signage systems, advertisements, graffiti—modern urbanity without typography would be inconceivable, and Shanghai is definitely no exception from that. When you look at the big neon advertisements, political posters, and mascots, you probably wouldn’t believe Shanghai’s impact on the development of modern Chinese typography once used to be crucial.
A clash of visual cultures provided a creative climate giving birth to Chinese graphic design: When Chinese traditional artists began to produce advertising media for foreign companies and products, a symbiosis of local visual traditions and Western strategies emerged from this process: The famous calendar images may serve as one of many examples here. The Bauhaus had an even stronger impact on early Chinese graphic design, as it initiated a creative explosion of decorative, modernistic typefaces (meishuzi), which is still highly influent until today, being increasingly focused on by design research. This development also emerged from Shanghai.
It might be less known that it was in Shanghai where William Gamble from the American Presbyterian Mission Press succeeded in manufacturing Chinese lead typean industrial scale, which revolutionized the entire East Asian typography, especially the Japanese one.
Also the Chinese character reforms of the early People’s Republic are closely connected to Shanghai: The newly established Research Institute for Printing Technology—featuring a Department for Typography Research—was instrumental in developing new standard printing typefaces for simplified Chinese in the 1960s.
The “TYPOShanghai” this walk focusing on typography in urban space will be led by Shanghai Flaneur’s creative director Roman Wilhelm, who is a graphic and typeface designer, specializing on cultural interaction between China and the West. It offers a possibility to put typography into the center of urban perception for a couple of hours. After a theoretical introduction, we will focus on the role of typography in the context of urban space, its aesthetical factor as well as the discrepancy between globalization and locality.