Archive | Originally published 2022-02-08. Ages, crowdfunding progress and current affairs are retained as reported at the time. Please refer to the product pages for current availability and licensing.
Reborn, then being crowdfunded, began as a Traditional Chinese design by Roy Chan. A legislator had approached him for campaign lettering for the planned 2020 Legislative Council election. Among the proposals was an early version of Reborn, first tested in the four characters 香港重生. ‘There were many feelings at the time. If everything had been peaceful, Reborn might not have happened.’ When the election was postponed, the campaign designs were no longer used.
Roy then spent a year and a half developing the design, including a 1,000-character trial edition. The crowdfunding campaign sought to support a 5,300-character version. He felt local Traditional Chinese type had seen too little renewal, and spoke of concern for Hong Kong’s culture and language: rather than waiting until something was lost, he wanted to contribute while he could. Another typeface meant another choice.
Text: 凌梓鎏
Images: Moodmen Font and online sources
From a font to a concert stage
The planned 5,300-character set included Cantonese forms such as 啱, 啲 and 咁, familiar in everyday messages. Paying for fonts was less familiar to many people, though designers, YouTubers, editors and animators all needed them. A designer had used the earlier 1,000-character trial edition on the video wall for Tat Ming Pair’s REPLAY LIVE 2021 concert. Roy was not there, but received screenshots. ‘I was surprised by how good it looked. That is what a typeface can do: people can use it freely within their own work. It keeps me imagining what type and the future might become.’
When Roy later contacted the video-wall designer, they described Reborn as suitable for both retro and contemporary treatments. That was precisely his intention: to combine Song details, associated here with older print culture, and gothic structure, familiar from digital displays. Moodmen Font had been established in 2019. By the time of the campaign, Roy worked with another designer and colleagues handling copy and advertising, around five people in total.
‘If we had the money, we would not need to crowdfund,’ he laughed. The small studio had made bottle openers shaped like 飲, phone cases and calendars featuring different lettering styles. But drawing a phrase and developing 5,300 characters were very different commitments. ‘There may be little profit in it. Products tend to be one-off projects; I want to make a typeface that can remain, be used by more people and continue into the future.’
The reporter compared Reborn to a contemporary man in vintage clothing: nostalgic without feeling disconnected from the present. ‘We want something that can be used in older fields as well as new ones,’ Roy said. He also saw the combination as a way of thinking about generations meeting rather than remaining in conflict, and about rediscovering something of Hong Kong’s spirit together.
Giving a feeling a typographic voice
The company began less deliberately than its later ambitions might suggest. Roy studied advertising and worked at KKBOX and a film distribution company. Missing characters in otherwise appealing fonts led him to construct the forms he needed from components. Sometimes a Japanese kanji form also differed from the Chinese convention. In mid-2018, he began pairing his own lettering with photographs on Instagram, sharing observations from life. Friends suggested opening a dedicated page and trying products.
That became Moodmen Font’s Instagram account. Roy particularly remembered a post around 發夢, dreaming, whose caption imagined a dream in which Hong Kong remained itself. He described Reborn’s early 2020 drawings as having strength. ‘I felt people needed a sense of unity and force, and that the letterforms could give that feeling a voice.’
Other independent local projects included Kit Man’s 勁揪體 and 陳敬倫’s 爆北魏體, both of which had successful crowdfunding campaigns. Roy and 陳敬倫 came to know each other through type, and even coordinated their campaign timing. ‘Few people do this because it is difficult.’ Beyond the drawing time, persuading people to pay for a font was challenging; asking them to pay in advance and wait months for delivery was harder still.
He still wanted to try. Roy spoke of preserving Traditional Chinese while external commercial and cultural influences changed the visual environment. He was not claiming that a single typeface could change the world: ‘I want people to know that, within the law, there are still many things each of us can do.’
