My Hand-Drawing Typography Of The Chinese Zodiac

My name is Mengyu Cao, the founder of YiQi Hanzi. I started my creative Chinese typography from Instagram @han.characters.

I started YiQi Hanzi from my dining table. Because of my interest in Chinese culture and Chinese characters, I wanna make it more fun and easier for people to understand and learn. I found out that there weren’t many creative creations around Chinese calligraphy compare to English lettering. So, I started to create my own characters and typography.

For this specific project, Chinese Zodiac typography combines Chinese calligraphy and watercolor drawing to present each character with its meaning. It's an art project with design thinking. It breaks the traditional Chinese calligraphy forms and adds creative drawings to it harmoniously to show the meaning of each Chinese character. Chinese characters always look like complicated drawings to people who don't know Chinese. I wanna use my design thinking and drawing skills to make it understandable to everyone to spread Chinese culture and the beauty of Chinese characters.

The Chinese zodiac is a classification scheme based on the lunar calendar that assigns an animal and its reputed attributes to each year in a repeating 12-year cycle. It is an approximation to the 11.85-year orbital period of Jupiter. 鼠Rat、牛Ox、虎Tiger、兔Rabbit、龙Dragon、蛇Snake、马Horse、羊Goat、猴Monkey、鸡Rooster, 狗Dog, 猪Pig.

website: https://www.yiqihanzi.com/

learning center: https://app.yiqihanzi.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/han_characters/

More info: Instagram