LettersHong Kong’s very own font would be a genuine world first
Readers discuss a craft-intensive investment that says Hong Kong believes in its future, the city’s focus on university rankings, and a World Cup red card scandal
This is now standard practice among cities and states that take their identity seriously. Sweden has Sweden Sans; the Netherlands mandates its Rijksoverheid typefaces across all central government communications; Dubai launched the Dubai Font in 2017 as an instrument of soft power. The rationale is partly economic – a bespoke typeface eliminates perpetual licensing fees across thousands of government documents and campaigns – but mostly expressive. A typeface is identity you use every day, not a mark you print on a banner.
Hong Kong’s case is stronger than most – indeed, it is unique. Commercial type foundries have produced Chinese fonts with companion Latin letters, but no government anywhere has commissioned an official typeface in which traditional Chinese and Latin scripts are conceived as equal partners within a single, coherent aesthetic. Dubai’s font married Arabic and Latin; Hong Kong is well positioned to attempt it for Chinese and Latin.
We are a city where the two scripts have shared street signs, shopfronts and newsprint for over a century. Our streets already carry a typographic heritage designers worldwide envy – the Beiwei calligraphy of our shopfronts, the neon lettering fast disappearing from our skyline, even the humble Prison Gothic of our road signs. A government-commissioned typeface drawn from this vernacular would be a genuine world first, and the most literal expression imaginable of East-meets-West – a claim many cities make, but only Hong Kong can set in type.
Designing a full traditional Chinese typeface is a serious undertaking, requiring more than 10,000 glyphs. That is precisely the point. It is the kind of patient, craft-intensive investment that says a city believes in its own future.