Typeface by non-white designer/typographer?

[Saara]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Hey typophiles,
I'm looking for typefaces made by non-white/non-european/non-western designers/typographers? Feeling a bit ignorant with this question, maybe there's an ocean of those that are super easy to find if I would just know where to look. But anyway I'm looking here for help!

Looking forward to replies!
S

[Riccardo Sartori]

Possible starting points:
www.myfonts.com/search/india/people/
www.myfonts.com/search/china/people/
www.myfonts.com/search/japan/people/
etc.

[Theunis de Jong]

Are all currently famous fonts created by notan typographers, then? I can't see the difference.

[hrant]

Sara, there are degrees of non-ness... What about an Indian guy living in the UK for example? For how long is OK? Then there are westerners who have moved out - do they count? And what about people from/in countries on the border, like Lebanon?

Theunis, what do you mean by "notan typographers"?

hhp

[Theunis de Jong]

Bad play on "no-tan" :D

The OP seems to assume common typefaces are in fact by "western" designers -- why? For all I know, Matthew Carter could be Australian, and you can't get much further east without ending up at the west again. Also, I wouldn't care if he is. (Just picked a random name, by the way.)

Possibly related to: the discussion a while ago on "why are Latin fonts predominant in the type industry" (or something alike). I cannot recall if that thread reached a conclusion or a consensus of some kind. Personally, I think a similar point could be made on a Chinese forum discussing their predominantly Chinese fonts, and by Chinese as well :-)

[Saara]

hrant, you're completely right, and I'm also interested in all the in-betweens, the gray zones if you wish.

The history of famous typographers (as well as graphic design in general) as presented to me during my education and beyond has been exclusively a Eurocentrist/American one. And I wish to learn what a question on this board can bring up in terms of other histories/perspectives/advice/links. If you have knowledge to share I'm really grateful!

Thanks riccardO

[Saara]

Theunis,
If the OP means me, I do assume that common typefaces are in the large majority made by "western" designers, please prove me wrong!

[hrant]

Theunis, I don't condone racism (although my definition is stricter than that of most... westerners :-) and as I hinted this is an extremely thorny sort of thing with a superb spectrum of grays, but to me it remains that we are in large part a result of our respective cultures (with each of us always having more than one) and as a result so is our output. And that's not a bug, that's a feature.

hhp

[Theunis de Jong]

Hrant, of course I'm with you. That's why it reminded me of the 'why do latin fonts rule' thread: it may only be from our point of view they seem to.

It's possible the answer for the OP (sorry, Saara: that's Forum Speak for "Original Poster") is the same as was mentioned in that thread: Money, Technology, Opportunity. But if that is the reason, it kind of acknowledges the statement "common typefaces are in the large majority made by "western" designers" to hold valid, and (a) I'm not convinced of that (but I'm not interested in the cultural background of the designers of my fonts so I never looked into that), and (b) I still wouldn't care if the designer of one of my favourite fonts turned out not to be the WASP I assumed him. Or, gasp, even turned out to be a woman (to take yet another turn).

[altsan]

I could be completely off base here, but I get the impression that Europe has a longer and deeper history of typefaces in general due to having a longer and deeper history of using movable type. I gather movable type took off in Europe more readily than in other cultures because Europeans had simpler writing systems. For instance, ISTR reading that movable type was invented in China some time before Gutenberg but just didn't see any significant adoption because it simply wasn't practical for a language with many thousands of common-use characters.

If that's the case, then European (and by extension Latin) text largely set the trends in printing and type design, and once the digital age came along (and computer character sets became standardized) the support of Latin text became embedded. The earliest generations of computers were Anglo-American and only supported ASCII (Latin). As new computer character sets were developed they were implemented as extensions of ASCII for compatibility purposes, and so virtually all character set standards mandate full Latin support, regardless of what other languages are covered. That logically extends to the computer fonts designed for them.

I've seen many references on myfonts and other sites to designers with Russian-sounding, Japanese-sounding, Middle-eastern-sounding, and other non-Anglocentric names. Even their fonts tend to include Latin, and that's what we see in the previews (usually). I suppose if they didn't, the fonts wouldn't be disseminated much outside their own countries/cultures.

Living for five years in Japan, I can't say I ever noticed a particularly wide variety of fonts being used, for either English/Roman text or for pure Japanese. (Virtually every sample of English I ever saw written used either MS Mincho/MS Gothic or Helvetica; the vast majority of Japanese text outside calligraphy or custom logos always seemed to be either Heisei-Gothic/Heisei-Mincho, MS Gothic/MS Mincho or something resembling the M+ fonts.)

[dezcom]

Saara,

Are you looking for designers of non-Latin scripts or simply non-caucasian designers of any script including Latin? I don't know of any listing by ethnicity but if you look for typefaces in Indic scripts, the names may tell you if they are of Indian origin.

[hrant]

Even their fonts tend to include Latin

One reason is that westerners tend to actually pay for fonts more often...

Another reason though is that type design education is very Western, which means you end up learning how to make Latin fonts automatically, in fact typically before you make a non-Latin font.

hhp

[PublishingMojo]

The Roman alphabet is itself an artifact of European culture [as Hrant observed while I was writing this], so it's perhaps inevitable that designing variations on the Roman alphabet is a profession mainly practiced by people of European origin or descent. I imagine us white folks are similarly under-represented in the ranks of those who design Kanji fonts.

Non-Europeans creating designs for the Roman alphabet is one measure of progress toward a more diverse society. Another measure--more important, in my opinion--will be more white folks learning to read non-Roman alphabets, and to respect the ideas they communicate.

[Theunis de Jong]

Another reason could be that the entire technology an sich is deeply culturally biased towards the Western world. The ASCII table, for example, has been the bane of everything European for literally decades on end (the "AS" stands for " American Standard). After much deliberating, and various more or less succesfull hacks (e.g. the dreaded "code pages"), the 'world wide' embrace of Unicode put an end to accent related troubles. Or to a lot. Not all of them.
However, in that the Western culture also ruled supreme! Arabic characters, for example, have been coaxed into 'different' code points for their four different forms. If you think writing a case insensitive search routine is a bother for Latin text, you can quadruple the efforts needed for Arabic.

Another example of technology following culture could be the keyboard. Much as "we" are used to a Shift key to toggle between capitals and lowercase -- to the point where we can mentally extend the concept to toggling between the number "3" and the character "#" even though these are unrelated --, if the keyboard concept was of Arabic origin, one could expect it to have four 'shift' keys to alternate between initial (somewhat equivalent to "our" capitals), medial, final, and isolated form. (Two shift keys with a binary function may also work.)
But that's still imaginable for "us" Anglo-Europeans. What if the concept of machine input was inherited from Chinese sources? I'm not talking about the clunky 30,000 key typewriter (which is just Western tech projected onto Chinese target audience). In China, an age old habit in discussing ideograms is to 'write' them in the palm of your hand. Extrapolating that to a mechanical method may have led to the touchpad as the primary input source for a computer!

Coming to a point here: if the reason Western font designers are dominant, and there may be "not that many" non-Western font designers, it is because the entire technology, from storage to display, is based on Western concepts of data storage, text input, rendering, and font design itself.

This whole story only covers one of my three points, Technology. I'm sure a similar argument (long winded, apologies) can be made for the other two: Money and Opportunity.

[Theunis de Jong]

Another measure--more important, in my opinion--will be more white folks learning to read non-Roman alphabets, and to respect the ideas they communicate.

Absolutely. I learned to read Greek and Cyrillic scripts in practice (although I usually only have a vague idea what the text actually says), and appreciating the letter forms taught me a lot about font design.
I'm teetering on the edge of a similar breakthrough for Arabic (where other people only see random scribblings, I can discern the various letter forms) and I'm hoping to get some extended exposure to it so I can make the jump to actually be able to read it.

[hrant]

Good analysis, and interesting ideas!

BTW Arabic would need only two shift keys (giving the necessary four possible combinations)* but only if you could place any one of the four forms anywhere, which you can't; so Arabs are lucky that -assuming the necessary software environment- an algorithm can choose for them... and in fact they don't need any shift key! Although personally I happen to be a fan of reforming Arabic to support capitalization. In case that sounds jingoistic: you should see what I want to do to Latin. :-)

* This being something I actually implemented in the late 80s for Broadcast Titler on the Amiga**; and you had to hit the left arrow key after each keystroke. :-) Those fonts of mine were actually also used to set Arabic and Farsi ads in some ethnic "yellow pages" directories. Memories...

** http://www.themicrofoundry.com/s_multimedia.html

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

…maybe there's an ocean…

[Theunis de Jong]

Hrant, two shift keys are sufficient for four forms. :)
(1) None, for medial forms, because those occur most frequently; (2) ShiftA for Capitals, (3) ShiftB for Finals, and (4) both, for isolated (as I think that would be the rarest form).

Typing, by the way, on my iPad. Actually the "keyboard" implementation on this device is dreadful. I make far more errors than usual, and they are way harder to correct (to a point where I hesitate to do a quick spell-and-grammar check). Then again, it's Western technology projected onto a device that does not naturally lend itself to it. Were I of Chinese descent and finally be able to write down any ideogram I wanted, I would have been delighted.

[hrant]

Learning other languages is awesome. But in our field mostly you need to appreciate the shapes, the script. For example I don't understand Russian or Greek but I'm familiar enough with their scripts to make usable fonts; this is the same situation with many people who design fonts for Arabic for example - they can barely read any of it (but make better Arabic fonts than me, even though I know Arabic). You don't even need to know about the sounds. To get an appreciation of this paradox, think about the severe mismatch in English spelling and pronunciation! :-)

hhp

[hrant]

Nick, I'm curious about your link - but it doesn't work.

ShiftA for Capitals

Minor: better termed "initials".

the "keyboard" implementation on [the iPad] is dreadful

I hear you brother. Even my lowly Kindle with a physical keyboard isn't as horrible.

But that's not a technology issue; that an issue with a company caring mostly about sounds and pictures and not really caring about text (and other companies sheepishly following their lead).

hhp

[dezcom]

It still seems to be a problem coming out of the sheer number of characters issue. Twentysix is just a much easier number to work with than 3,000. Even if you add the diacritics from Central Europe, it is much easier a technical issue than an Asian script.

[Nick Shinn]

Try again Hrant, the server may be busy.

***

Race, technology and culture isn’t the whole story—size and circumstance have something to do with it.
Not every European country is as well populated with type designers as the relatively small Netherlands.
And in Canada, with its centuries of European settlers, Carl Dair’s first indigenous type design was not made until 1967.

[Theunis de Jong]

Carl Dair’s first indigenous type design ...

Indigenous as in "made in Canada", or the very first Canadian Syllabic font?

Perhaps this question is too much like asking "why are most famous didgeridoo players of Australian descent", applied to fonts.

[Nick Shinn]

Sorry, I was going to mention the real first Canadian typeface, a rough piece of work made in the 19th century for a First Nations language by a missionary, but I couldn’t remember his name, and a quick Google didn’t come up with it.

[BeauW]

@Nick : James Evans?