11ty logo

Chinese Type Systems

Poster image for YouTube video
Watch Chinese Type Systems on YouTube

In this talk, ivan will talk about understanding Chinese type systems, pairing Chinese fonts, and why its so hard to put your Chinese font in the @font-face in CSS. Typesetting on the web with Chinese fonts is extremely difficult and ivan will give examples of pages that do this beautifully, and recommendations on how to find these.

They will also talk about the history of the Chinese language, the differences in character based vs glyph based, and the difficulties of pairing the two types together. They’ll dive into the various classifications of systems that they use and talk about how to notice and pair Chinese fonts together, as well as actionably implementing them in CSS and the bundle size of the file.

Watch on YouTube

This is a talk session at the 11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good.

CloudCannon Artist Activist
Ivan is smiling with dark sunglasses and short dark hair. He is wearing a light colored collared shirt. ivan zhao
A web site made real good:
ivanzhao.me

Ivan Zhao (he/him) is a poet, type designer, and site maker interested in nonlinear narratives, forms, and mechanics that reckon with digital, diasporic, and queer identity. His work interrogates individual and viewer agency. His research interests revolve around tools, computational systems, and play. When he's not making weird things on the internet, he's making weird bread in the kitchen.

Schedule

Time Talk
Previous
19:30 UTC
Come to the light side: HTML Web Components
Current
19:55 UTC
Chinese Type Systems
Next
20:10 UTC
Light mode versus Dark mode

-
View the full schedule
The possum mascot floating on a red balloon via a light blue tether attached at the waist. They are wearing oversized glasses.
An alley way with a green dumpster. A brick building sits in the background with a small possum floating on a red balloon in the window.