The Northern Wei Regular Script combines two kinds of strokes, both hard and soft, in harmony and unity. The strokes and transitions turn sharp angles. According to the designer, his nearly twenty years of experience in the printing press has given him the ability to feel a special affinity towards the knife and chisel marks in stone inscriptions such as tombstones and statues (Liao, 70). The inscribed letters on hard surfaces require stiff tools that can produce letters with both rigid and flexible lines. The designer applied this feeling to the creation of the "Northern Wei Regular Script", adding an air of stiffness and composure to the script.

Later generations studied the scripts from the Wei stone tablets by imitating the graver with an ink brush, that is, by using a soft brush to imitate a hard blade. In this combination of scripts, the contrast between the senses of the brush and the blade creates a wonderfully harmonious blend. Some of the strokes are as easy as if they were written with a soft brush, such as the rounded apostrophes and presses at the end, while others are as hard as if they were carved into a stone wall with a knife, such as the hard start of the vertical strokes and the sharp corners of the horizontal folds. When the softness of the ink brush and the rigidity of the carving knife are skillfully blended in the same set of characters, the overall appearance is both solid and dynamic.

The spacing between characters and between lines is proper, increasing the readability of the typographic composition without losing its solemn beauty.


*Picture: A sample of the font Northern Wei Regular Script.

Works Cited

Liao, Jielian. CHINESE TYPOGRAPHER 中國字體設計人：一字一生. Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press, 2012.