An investigation of Chinese typography is a sculptural and typographical response of the history and anatomy of Chinese typography. Due to the sheer volume of characters, the development of web fonts and the design of contemporary typography in the Chinese language remains rudimentary compare to other western languages. Phonetic languages that utilise alphabets, such as English, have the ability to quickly develop new typefaces within weeks; whereas a logographic language such as Chinese, with over 50,000 characters, the design process is laborious and often requires years to complete. Joanna Yang’s work examines the structure of Chinese language by decomposing characters three dimensionally through suspending sculptures and recomposing two dimensionally using light and shadow. These typography was further explored through paper cuts and folding techniques which continued to investigate the anatomy and history of Chinese typography.

Using fruit cuttings and matriarchal crafts as inspiration, Kate Madsen’s Fruit Grandma explores gender roles in art/craft/design through embroidery, textiles and repetitive patterns.