The Impression of Round and Square: Chinese Calligraphy Aesthetics in Modern Type Design

Abstract

Round and square are important concepts in Chinese aesthetics. The legacy of Chinese calligraphy aesthetics has led the way to modern design. In HCI, interface typefaces influence users’ reading experiences. Users’ aesthetic preferences may influence their reading experiences as well. The investigation of how human aesthetic preferences are affected by character visual features (e.g., character size and character weight) in type design has received substantial attention. However, it is difficult to accurately study human aesthetic preferences through these visual features in Chinese calligraphy-type design. How Chinese character visual features affect human aesthetic preferences is not clear. Inspired by graphic design, different visual features (e.g., color and texture) can cause changes in impression expressions (e.g., modern and classical), thus affecting human aesthetic preferences. In this article, we introduced a character impression analysis method to investigate how human aesthetic preferences are affected by Chinese character visual features. First, we proposed two impression expressions of character (round and square) from the concepts of Chinese aesthetics; Then, for these two impression expressions, we modeled four visual features of calligraphy characters from the principles of Gestalt psychology. Finally, we conducted two studies to investigate how visual features affect impression expressions and explored the relationship between aesthetic preferences. The results clearly explain how character visual features affect human aesthetic preferences. The present study can give designers a deep understanding of how visual features affect human aesthetic preferences based on character impression analysis. It can guide designers to make better type design decisions to achieve a high aesthetic preference for users. Furthermore, the findings of the present study can potentially provide new insights into Latin type design.