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Hanzi: New Design Documentary on Chinese Typography

Muris is the creative studio behind Design & Thinking and Maker, documentaries about design thinking and the maker movement. Now they’ve got a third project in their sites, this one targeting an underappreciated are of graphic design: Hanzi, “a documentary exploring international design, visual culture and identity through the lens of modern Chinese typography.”

Consider that a designer creating a new font in Roman letters might have to deal with several hundred characters. But designing a font in Hanzi (Chinese characters) requires dealing with over 10,000 of them. It’s a Herculean task, and almost criminally underexamined.

Despite the doc’s focus, “[it’s] not just about Chinese characters,” Muris writes:

We wanted to keep the ideas and messages applicable to all languages and cultures. Exploring universal subjects such as “How does language shape identity? What role does handwriting play in the digital age?”, Hanzi encourages audiences around the world to revisit and rethink their own culture, language and identity.

Having successfully funded both Design & Thinking and Maker on Kickstarter, Muris is coming around for a third pass with Hanzi. The film is already in the can, as they say, with shooting wrapped in New York, Hong Kong, London and Taipei. What’s needed next is funding for distribution and marketing, to the tune of $10,000. At press time they were 87% of the way there, with 31 days left to pledge. If you’d like to help, the campaign is here.