The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2024
FounderType's Yuekai family fuses Kai and Hei strokes to make Chinese reading type
FZHaoGeYueKaiZhen blends Kai regular-script and Hei sans-serif features into three series of reading type, fifteen styles in all.
FounderType (方正字库)
What it had to solve
Designing Chinese characters for reading means balancing factors that pull apart: reading efficiency, the aesthetics and heritage of the script, and standardised character usage. The FZHaoGeYueKaiZhen family took a problem-oriented approach — research as the method, design as the means.
How it works
Chinese characters designed for reading carry a hidden tension: efficiency pulls toward simple, uniform strokes, while the script's aesthetic and heritage live in calligraphic forms, and standardised usage must hold throughout. FZHaoGeYueKaiZhen took this as a design problem worth solving.
Its answer was to combine the design features and reading experience of Kai (regular script) with those of Hei (sans-serif), balancing reading efficiency, Chinese character aesthetics and heritage, and standardised character usage.
The resulting Yuekai family consists of three series — Zhen, Shan and Mei — each in five weights, fifteen styles in total, giving typographers a graduated range for different reading contexts. The work is archived in the D&AD awards archive under type design.
Why it lands
- A hybrid solved a false choice: readers no longer had to pick between calligraphic beauty and modern efficiency.
- The three-series, five-weight structure turned one idea into a graduated system usable across print and screen contexts.
- Research-first positioning made the balance explicit rather than stylistic, so each design decision could be defended.
- Standardised character usage was treated as a design factor, not an afterthought, keeping the family practical for real text.
What it did
A fifteen-style family now bridges Chinese type's two traditions, offering readers a face tuned for efficiency and heritage at once. The typeface is archived in the D&AD awards archive under type design.
What you can take
When two traditions each serve a different need, the product idea can be the bridge: a family that fuses them gives readers a third option instead of a forced choice.
Since then
For FounderType, the family added a reading-focused product to its catalogue: fifteen styles that treat Chinese type's heritage and modern efficiency as combinable rather than opposed. Released in 2024 and archived in the D&AD awards archive, FZHaoGeYueKaiZhen stands as a type-design answer to a reading problem.
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