Hanwen zhengkai is a famous regular type font born in Shanghai during the 1930s that consists of 11 sizes and styles, and is the first set of full type from the Republic of China era. Hanwen zhengkai was warmly received after its birth and was soon purchased by the Japanese Ashizawa Printing Shop and Kaneda Sansei Printing Shop in Japan. It was altered by famous Japanese companies such as NTF Type Foundry, IWATA, and MOTOYA. The Japanese regular script is deeply influenced by the hanwen hengkai font type. The alteration and redesign ran through the typesetting, phototypesetting, and digital eras; spreading to China. Taiwan and the southeast Asia region. We have collected and sorted out materials and literature works dating 90 years baxk, providing the digital redesign of Hanwen Zhengkai with detailed and accurate references and a solid basis. The speech consists of four parts: The origin and development of Hanwen Zhengkai from 1929 to 1935; the spread and influence of hanwen zhengkai in east Asia from 1933 to the 1990s; the applications and improvements of hanwen zhengkai in the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the 1980s; and the digital redesign of hanwen zhengkai from 2017 to 2021.
The Spread, Influence and Redesign of Hanwen Zhengkai
