CJKs are usually grouped together. Yes, they share many similar traits including the use of Chinese characters, monospaced letterform as a default, type designed in embox (square) and so on, the path their types took to develop are distinctively different. The talk will focus on Japanese and Korean with three parts of differences: historical, classification and typesetting (engineering). For example, how metal type setting was imported (or invented in Korea’s case!), vanished through seclusion policy and reimported, invention of phototypesetting (in Japan), how multiscript typesetting was done. Perhaps because of these different paths they took, they both have their own unique type classifications that focus on different things; in Japan there are specific type classifications for educational purposes (Gakusan and Kakijun), and in Korea the type classification is more about the culture of the language and script (Talnemo, meaning out-of-the-box, classification is invented by Ahn Sang Soo to have more authentic Hangeul letterform structure). Typesetting rules and type engineering are also quite different—e.g. Japanese has kerning-ish original function called Proportional Metrics, whereas Hangeul usually does not work with kernings. What are the shared traits and what are the difference? Why is it important to understand these differences? How can we make better typefaces and typography afterwards?
How Type in Latin, Japanese, and Korean Each Developed, Classified, and Engineered to Resolve Their Typographic Culture and Issues
