Archive | Originally published 2019-12-20. Ages, crowdfunding progress and current affairs are retained as reported at the time. Please refer to the product pages for current availability and licensing.
My first encounter with Moodmen Font was, as I remember it, shortly after Typhoon Mangkhut. I saw specially drawn lettering for 山竹, the typhoon’s Chinese name, and followed it to an Instagram account full of different treatments. It reminded me that Hong Kong had its own letterform designers. My favourite among the works was 香港人, Hong Kong people, assembled from colourful memo notes.
Roy, the person behind Moodmen, studied advertising and worked on design for music platforms and film companies. He became increasingly interested in how letterforms affected a whole composition. His Christmas card read ‘Nothing is impossible’, reflecting his sense of what Hong Kong people could do together. ‘Much of what has happened in the past six months has overturned familiar assumptions. The biggest change is the loss of our old indifference; recognising someone as being on the same path can make people willing to help one another.’ As in his other work, the background image reinforced the words: an imagined snowy Hong Kong made the phrase visible.
The greeting 喂, roughly ‘hey’, has an intimacy when spoken to someone familiar. 喂！香港人 addresses no particular individual, yet feels warm. ‘Design comes from daily life. That is often the first thing we say when we meet someone we know.’ Discussing the words 香港人, Roy felt that saying them openly, in more situations, could strengthen a shared sense of identity.
On earlier Christmas Eves, even a crowded and cold Nathan Road could feel warm. Friends and strangers might exchange a greeting. The writer saw a particularly strong willingness to help one another that year, including across nationality and ethnicity, through the shared experience of Hong Kong.
Born in Hong Kong: our generation
Snow in Hong Kong might seem unlikely, but familiar assumptions had already been challenged repeatedly. Roy reflected on a society in which younger people were traditionally expected to obey their elders, and on the abilities they had demonstrated. ‘Whatever your age, you have your own value. I want to use what I can do to help more people appreciate lettering.’ He also hoped people would pause for a couple of seconds while scrolling: would a word such as persistence or forgetting, together with its image and caption, connect with something in their own lives?
Moodmen’s name came from a story about two friends asking what success meant. One moved towards his goal at full speed, ignoring everything else. Moodmen also had ambitions, but travelled more slowly, enjoying the scenery and meeting people along the way. Eventually their paths separated. ‘Whose definition of success are we using? I chose to be Moodmen. Who can say whether that is success? For now, I will keep going.’
The immediate task was to sell the 2020 calendar, 生於香港的無奈. Despite its title about the frustrations of living in Hong Kong, Roy intended it as companionship: other people might be experiencing the same things, and no one needed to feel alone. Each month featured a line written by Roy or a friend and a different lettering treatment. The themes were not all political; one line reflected how conversations among friends change from restaurants and celebrities to jobs, housing and having children. His own Moodmen style appeared in June, with the quietly placed notation ‘200+1’ inviting readers to consider its meaning.
A keepsake card inside the calendar closed with the thought: ‘Last year was difficult; let the next be better.’
Text: Jaz Kong | Images: tung tung tung
Special thanks: jisaam books 貳叄書房
