WHAT BRINGS JT FOUNDRY TO FONT REPRODUCTION?

Nowadays, most free and open-source Traditional Chinese (TC) fonts adhere to the handwriting-based schooling standards of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Such standards are not suitable for print, while print style fonts are predominantly commercially licensed.

Source Han Sans TC (aka Noto Sans CJK TW), jointly developed and launched by Adobe and Google, instantly took over considerable graphic designs in the TC world. Many designers have criticised the font family for substantial design flaws owing to the schooling standard that strays from the aesthetics of Han characters.

All these fling JT Foundry into font reproduction. Re-designed on the basis of Source Han Sans, Taipei Sans TC is envisioned to be an optimal open-source and free product that fits in contemporary design circumstances in the TC world.

WHY IS IT TAIPEI SANS TC?

JT Foundry plans to re-edit the open-source Source Han Sans and Source Han Serif font families. Derived products are intended to be renamed with core cities in the TC world – Taipei is the first of all our products labelled with city names.

Project overview

• Adherent to the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1, the re-editing highly counts on the KR version of Source Han Sans which includes most Han characters in the traditional form ('Kyūjitai' in Japanese) and print style. The project aims to edit strokes of glyphs to make them akin to contemporary customs of TC characters.
• Radical components are basically adherent to the traditional form. Frequently-used characters (based on the 4,808 characters categorised by Taiwan's Ministry of Education and other criteria) of TC should have consistent radical component design even if modification of radical components is necessary.
• Other components are changed to the modern form if they differ excessively from contemporary writing customs of TC.

PROJECT MILESTONES

Phase 1 (by the end of June 2019)

• 3 weights (light, regular and bold) prioritised for release to cater for basic requirements in graphic and website design. Emboldened text without a bold-style font is therefore avoided.

Phase 2 (by the end of 2020)

• 4 other weights (extralight, normal, medium and heavy) will be released to meet more advanced design requirements.