Zhengzheng Li

As a graphic designer, I am often interested in the question of how typefaces, scripts and pictograms can acquire poetic characteristics at a visual level. Recognising that developments in this field have progressed along comparatively different lines in Eastern and Western contexts, I aim to identify points of significance for my own practice as a visual poet.

For my year-long project, I have been developing the typeface on Nüshu. Nüshu translates into 'women’s writing', it is an endangered phonetic language used by women from the Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China. It is the world’s only language that is gender-specific to women as a rebellion towards the patriarchal society, allowing women to express their feelings freely. It was mainly written as dairies, books or embroidered to handicrafts, and to be only shared among close female friends or relatives. I have completed 397 Nüshu characters listed from the Unicode Standard in three weights as part of the major project. Each Nüshu character was designed correspondent to the equivalent Chinese character. Apart from that, I also wanted to experiment with the application of this typeface and explore the poetic implications of such a feminine script. I came up with the idea of using the Nüshu language in combination with my typeface to express my own feelings in the form of concrete poetry.