Advanced Typography and Unicode Support for Bespoke Products
By: LiquidPixels | November 2, 2021 | 4 Min Read
Typography has long played an important role in product development and design.
Smart, sophisticated choices around typography can elevate products from good to great. Utilizing alphabetic characters from multiple languages, when rendered well, can have a truly powerful impact.
For bespoke products, the proper use of typography is doubly important. One-of-a-kind products demand a high level of personalization, and they need to reflect the identity of the buyer in a unique way. Advanced typography, in this sense, can be key in achieving this goal.
However, advanced typography only works when it can be properly rendered and displayed. Many sellers face the challenge that their tools possess character limitations. Unicode support is critical to achieving the level of sophistication required in advanced typography projects. Without this support, a seller is forced to interpret the customer’s intentions rather than work from a true representation of the desired product. And, often, mistakes occur.
By contrast, when a seller is in possession of tools that leverage the Unicode standard, they can access a wide array of characters and symbols for their designs. This allows them to display advanced typography with confidence and create the product that their customer envisioned.
Developing the World Standard
Before the Unicode standard emerged, there were hundreds of different character encoding systems used to digitally render letters and other characters. In many cases, the English alphabet was the common medium used in printing, coding, and documentation. Consequently, characters from other languages frequently caused issues, because the systems were not designed to handle foreign alphabets.
For example, software written for the English language could not handle Cyrillic characters for Russian words or kanji characters for Japanese. Translating a Spanish document to Greek would result in accented Latin characters being replaced with Greek symbols. Even web pages built on Windows would lose certain technical symbols because they were not compatible with Unix or macOS.
To solve this problem, the Unicode consortium developed a system that assigned a unique number to every character in each of the world’s major languages. Thus, the Unicode standard was born.
As of writing this blog post, Unicode has released its 14.0 version, which now has a total of 144,697 characters, 159 scripts, and even includes emoji characters. The Unicode standard has frequently been expanded to include new symbols and characters from lesser-used languages, historic scripts, and unique written requirements from all around the world.
Typography Issues in Fashion
In the world of product creation and design, adopting the Unicode standard enabled advanced typography in many products, especially in fashion. Still, some tools used for printing or showcasing bespoke products do not possess Unicode support. This presents problems for many in the industry.
For years, fashion brands in the west have had issues with Chinese characters (hànzì) in their products. Hanzi encompasses an entire culture’s heritage, and its complexities are often overlooked when it comes to utilizing them for design.
Case in point: the Burberry scarf issue of 2015. When the Chinese character for “fortune” was misprinted, the company used the simplified form instead of the traditional one, thus missing an important cultural nuance and offending their Asian customers. Another example is the Dior Book Tote handbags that “looked cheap” because the design utilized Source Han Sans. According to Li Zhiqian, co-founder of Shanghai-based type foundry 3type, this typeface is often used in “demolition houses, in villages, under the bridges, by garbage houses,” and is unappealing to the Chinese consumer.
Not only is this an issue of disrespecting Chinese culture, it is also a business issue. Chinese shoppers are, after all, the main drivers of the luxury economy, projected to make up 46 percent of luxury goods purchases by 2025.
The Complexity of Characters in Design
Advanced typography is often a difficult process in design. Non-English characters are complex, subtle, and visually alluring. Therefore, artists usually make the most of these characters in their designs, sometimes featuring them heavily.
For Japanese artists, utilizing the Japanese kanji as a focal element is common practice. As Ryan Hageman, designer and curator of Gurafiku, said:
“It takes a lot of work to create a Japanese typeface, and because of this, there aren’t nearly as many off-the-shelf and expressive typefaces to choose from… For a poster or book cover, it’s easier to just draw up the characters for a few words than to create an entire typeface.”
Mixing languages is also a common theme in Japanese design. “Japanese words are usually written with ideographic characters,” said Hageman, “and can also be written with the Roman characters we’re familiar with, and English mixed with Japanese writing is also a common occurrence in Japanese design.”
When done correctly, this results in beautiful, aesthetically pleasing creations. However, without Unicode support, it is quite difficult to achieve this level of sophistication. It is possible, but it takes a tremendous effort from the artist and involves processes and methods that are very hard to either replicate or scale.
Delivering Advanced Typography with Unicode Support
It is crucial for designers to have tools that leverage the Unicode standard in their advanced typography projects.
Beyond the aesthetic and the cultural significance of such designs, Unicode support also enables companies to reach a wider market with more extensive product design capabilities, and helps them stay ahead of the competition.
Case in point: a LiquidPixels client in the sports merchandise industry needed a solution to support non-English characters and Asian typefaces on personalized sports apparel for the Little League World Series. With the help of LiquiFire® OS, the client was able to provide Unicode support for their customers’ advanced typography needs, as well as full spot color definition support.
The result? Over 600+ Little League World Series customized products ordered within first 24-hours of deployment.
To learn more about how LiquidPixels solutions support the Unicode standard and how it helps enterprises with their typography needs, check out our demos here.