Archive | Originally published 2019-10-17. Ages, crowdfunding progress and current affairs are retained as reported at the time. Please refer to the product pages for current availability and licensing.
Moodmen’s task
One day, scrolling through Instagram, I came across Moodmen Font. Each post paired a photograph with a word or phrase, in a style unlike the standard fonts on a computer. On a phone, the combinations became small landscapes made from words and forms.
Behind Moodmen is Roy. ‘If the picture and the lettering remain separate, the whole thing does not make much sense. Bring them together and you first see their relationship, then read the caption; the experience becomes more coherent.’ The copy extends the meaning, but, as he says, it supports the words rather than replacing them as the subject.
Roy once underestimated lettering himself. ‘I was not particularly interested in the typography class on my advertising course. We had to design our own names. Only after trying it did I understand why the forms mattered.’
Chinese lettering brings particular challenges. ‘I am drawing a phrase, not only an isolated character. In 夢幻, for example, 夢 contains many strokes while 幻 has very few. Giving both an identical stroke weight makes it difficult to balance them together.’
His choice of words comes from daily life. Listening to Leo Ku’s 致少年時代 led him to the phrase 少年時代, with a youthful mood in mind. He remembered opening bottles of soft drink at neighbourhood shops, and brought the sensation of rising bubbles into the lettering.
Why work with Chinese? ‘It is direct and familiar. I never initially thought about another script: we live in Hong Kong and use Traditional Chinese. If local designers do not care for it, who will?’
Behind the word ‘persistence’
Does the word come first, or the visual idea?
‘It varies. For 堅持, persistence, the word came first. I initially drew a hard, rigid style with elements passing through it like reinforcing bars. Just before posting, it still did not feel right, so I started again.’
The final treatment appears gentler. ‘Often we cannot see the road ahead, rather like someone finding a route through tactile dots. Even once you find the direction, you have to keep walking. Persistence does not always have to look rigid.’
