In the Spring semester of my fourth year at Emily Carr University, I explored the possibilities of improving legibility and overall usability of pairing latin letterforms with Chinese characters. The hypothesis came about from a recent trip back to Macau, where I spent a few short years of my childhood. Going back this time allowed me to see my childhood home with a fresh perspective. What continued to catch my eye was the use of multiple languages in signage, airport documents and print in general. Despite how trivial this issue might seem to most people, I became more and more curious in this aspect of typography—especially as it spoke to my background being a Canadian-born Chinese.
Discovery
Once we got into researching our thesis topics, I quickly realized how talented though small the type design community was around the world; and then how much smaller of a percentage of type designers looking into the same concerns I had. My research led me to contact designers Roman Wilhelm, Keith Tam and Julius Hui—each being instrumental to my learning of the design relationships between the two language forms. What I gathered from my research was that a taller x-height and wider letter-forms would overall, help better blend the visual appearance of English and Chinese words together.