Caroline Chen

PICGRA Typeface

‘PICGRA’ is a typeface designed to modernize ancient Chinese pictographic letters. It features minimal forms, san serifs and even stroke weights. While ‘PICGRA’ reveals a sense of contemporary design aesthetic, the quality of the traditional pictograms is maintained. The original form of the Chinese oracle bone script and seal script is well preserved so that people can still read and understand the meaning of the letter when looking at the typeface.This experimental typeface is a mixture of traditional and modern that would bring more awareness to Chinese traditional culture and history.I applied the typeface ‘PICGRA’ in two different materials - clay and glass. The stark contrast between the two is very interesting. The two applications show contrary methods of writing and using these traditional modern letterforms.