Early April 2012 I went to visit my friend in Beijing for business related purposes and I got to meet with the city for the first time. And I loved it! To go from one appointment to the next I took the subway to get where I was heading next and like most subways, it was coloured by advertisements. I usually find them all generic just like the ads here in Europe, but one ad absolutely captivated me. Not only because of the photography skills, but moreover because of the use of font.
Given the nature of Chinese characters and that each line has its own order and stroke movement, it asks for a whole other level of creativity for thinking up new funky fonts. North Face nailed it and it made their ads twice as interesting.
For those of you not familiar with Chinese characters, writings or fonts, it might strike you as same difference. However if you were to compare the use of different fonts used in Roman writing, you will instantly see how little variation is offered for Chinese characters. Because first and foremostly, especially in small print, it needs to be legible and that is difficult to manage when one character can have up to 10 strokes.
That is why the font of the North Face ad immediately drew my attention because it took a popular font-style for Roman writing and managed to convert it for Chinese characters. It might not mean much to most people, especially for those who use the subway everyday or for those who aren’t particular interested in fonts, but this I believe is the work of someone really really creative.
