The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2023
Alibaba's Puhui Font diagrams rare Chinese characters people cannot read
For Puhui Font's 2023 rare-word database, Alibaba Design turns unreadable characters into modern diagrams dressed in folk colors and patterns.
Alibaba Design
What it had to solve
In 2023, Alibaba's Puhui Font was launching a rare-words database. Rare characters carry strong regional character and are an important part of Chinese folk culture, but they are difficult to read and understand — so a launch that simply listed them would teach nothing.
How it works
In 2023, Alibaba's Puhui Font was launching a rare-words database. Rare characters have strong regional character and carry pieces of Chinese folk culture, but most are so difficult to read and understand that people pass them by — and with them, the culture they hold.
'Diagram of Rare Words' removed the reading barrier: each word was explained with an image. Pioneering, modern shapes express the meaning, while traditional Chinese folk colors and patterns anchor it in the regional culture it comes from.
The pictures let people know the rare words by looking at them, turning a font's technical release into cultural content anyone could enter. D&AD kept the work in its awards archive; its jury noted the design, colors and patterns were pushed in a very pleasing, interesting and unexpected way. The page records no viewing figures.
Why it lands
- It made literacy visual: you can understand a character before you can pronounce it, so the barrier becomes the invitation.
- The folk colors and patterns carry context inside the picture, teaching meaning and cultural origin together.
- It gives a technical product — a font database — a public form people can actually look at and enjoy.
- Modern shapes over folk decoration make the diagrams feel contemporary and rooted at the same time, which is why the D&AD jury singled out the color and pattern play.
What it did
The diagrams make forgotten folk words legible at a glance, with the regional culture carried inside each picture. The work earned a place in the D&AD awards archive, whose jury praised how its colors and patterns were pushed in a pleasing, unexpected direction.
What you can take
When people cannot read the content, translate it into a sense they already use: drawing a rare character's meaning turns a database of unreadable words into something to look at.
Since then
The work is preserved in the D&AD awards archive, with the jury praising its unexpected color and pattern play; the page records no usage figures. Its transferable move is treating an inaccessible archive as a visual content problem: when the audience cannot read the material, showing its meaning in pictures can carry the culture to people who would never open a character list.
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