The development of printing technology for half a century

Printing technology is a comprehensive application technology that involves many disciplines such as physics, chemistry, mechanics, electronics, and so on. On the one hand, printing has contributed to promoting the development of social civilization. On the other hand, scientific and technological progress has created necessary conditions for the development of printing technology.

The printing technique invented by the ancestors of the Chinese nation has gone through more than 5,000 years with the light of Chinese civilization. From the Shang Dynasty, Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty to Yi and Tang, and from Song and Yuan to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, although printing technology has also been reformed and changed, in general, the pace of progress has been slow.

After the nineteenth century, with the Westward printing of western printing, the western printing of lead type, lithography, and photographic plates were successively introduced into China. Since then, Chinese printing has entered a historical stage in modern times. If we say that ancient Chinese printing was based solely on human craftsmanship as a feature of graphic stencil printing, then modern printing is mainly driven by people's driving machinery to complete the graphic transfer. Since the 1970s, the world has entered the era of electronic information. Computers have been widely used in various fields of society. Electronic technology and printing science have been combined to produce electronic color separation machines, electronic engraving machines, and automatic identification systems for inking systems. Modern computer science and technology means such as electronic computer typesetting system and color desktop system.

The development of contemporary Chinese printing technology coincides with the historical turning point in the era of printing technology from the age of power and mechanics to the era of electronic information. The 16-character guideline of “Phototypesetting, electronic color separation, high-speed offset printing, and binding linkage” proposed by the China Printing Technology Equipment Coordination Group established in 1982 was printed on the State Planning Commission on February 11, 1983 by the Printing Technology Equipment Coordination Group of the State Economic Commission. The State Economic Commission "Report on the Plan for Requesting the Approval of Printing Technology Equipment Development". , It better summarizes the development direction of printing technology.

The first section of the development of text typesetting technology

Since the invention of movable typesetting printing in the Qing Dynasty of the Northern Song Dynasty, text typesetting has always been an extremely important link in the process of typographic printing. The Chinese characters used by the Chinese people have gone through more than 5,000 years of long history, from pictographic forms to regular script books, and from literary changes to the Song Dynasty. Chinese characters are ideographic characters in the form of sounds, with a large number of words, but rich vocabulary; concise language, strong expression skills. The high degree of refinement of the Chinese language makes all Chinese proud. However, on the other hand, from the point of view of printing technology, the number of Chinese characters is too large, which also brings great inconvenience to the typesetting of Chinese characters. After Han Xushen, Shu Wen Wen Zi received the Chinese character 9353, and in the Kangxi Dictionaries of the Qing Emperor Kangxi he compiled 47,535 Chinese characters. In 1915, the Chinese Dictionary, which included 48,000 Chinese characters, was published in Taiwan in 1968. The published "Chinese Dictionary" has a total of 49,905 Chinese characters. Although the number of words commonly used in the development of Chinese and Chinese characters is gradually decreasing and the vocabulary is increasing, there are still as many as three or four thousand commonly used Chinese characters. Even the reprinted Xinhua Dictionary published by the Commercial Press in 1992 also included 11100 Chinese characters. There are also about 7,000 Chinese characters in general book printing factories. This feature of Chinese characters makes the typographic process faced by Chinese character typeetters much more complex than the typesetting process of Western Pinyin texts. For example, in terms of word frequency, arrangement of characters, creation of printed fonts, production of fonts, layout design, etc., all reflect the huge differences between the Eastern and Western languages.

Creation of Printed Fonts > I. Creation of Printed Fonts

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of this century, the Commercial Press and the Zhonghua Bookstore, which were established in Shanghai, not only contributed to the spread of modern printing in China, but also laid the foundation for the creation of printed Chinese characters and the production of bronze molds. By the 1930s, the use of printed fonts, in addition to the Song body and the body in vitro, has increased the imitation of Song and black body. However, the latter two fonts were not commonly used in newspapers and books. For example, the newspaper “Declaration”, the largest circulation newspaper in the country published in 1936, used only one type of Lao Song fonts from the text to the title.

1. The finishing of the 50's fonts, the implementation of the "Chinese simplified program"

In the early 1950s, the General Administration of Publication and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of China attached great importance to the specification of printed words, and successively issued a series of notices to promote the reform of printed characters.

At the beginning of the 1950s, there was no condition for organizing the reform of the text and creating a new typeface. It was only to sort out existing fonts and make up for the shortages, so as to respond to the needs of the publishing industry at that time.

On May 1, 1955, the Text Reform Committee issued the "Simple Draft for Chinese Characters". Later, the Ministry of Culture and the Letter Reform Commission jointly issued a notice requesting newspapers, magazines, publishers, and printing houses of provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions to try and simplify Chinese characters. In January 1956, the State Council officially announced the “Chinese Characters Simplification Plan”, thus ending the unstandardized situation in which the number of Chinese characters is too large, the strokes are complicated, and homonyms are used in a chaotic manner. This also creates conditions for the creation of new printing fonts and the replacement of new fonts.

In order to cooperate with the implementation of the “Chinese simplified scheme”, the font-model factory and the printing factory quickly replaced the character model, and the printed characters met the society with a new look.

By the early 1960s, there were four types of printed fonts commonly used in publications:

The body script, also known as the real book, is the oldest written script of the history of Chinese characters. It draws on the essence of Chinese calligraphers and masters. It is elegant, elegant, and elegant. It is suitable for printing primary school textbooks and children's books.

The song style, horizontal and vertical thick, rigid and soft economy, strong and upright, dignified and stable, both for the engraved version and suitable for reading, since the Ming Dynasty has been the preferred font for book printing.

Imitational style, in 1916 Hangzhou Jinshi calligrapher Ding Fuzhi's brother personally wrote carved fonts. In 1921, the Ding brothers and the Zhonghua Book Co., Ltd. formally promoted the "Jinchen imitation of the Song Dynasty." The font has both the style of the Song Dynasty and the charm of the body. It is bright and beautiful, and it can be printed with ancient books. It can coordinate with the Song and the body.

Blackbody, a printed typeface that mimics Japanese characters in the 1930s, is very eye-catching and is used for printing titles.

2. Create a new typography

Printed fonts are the first impressions that prints give readers intuitively. If "Wen Ruozhi Renren" and "word if its body", what kind of article content, what kind of printed fonts to use to show off, has always been the intention of the publishing and printing workers. However, when the production of printing fonts is still in the hand-work style, it is hard to say that a new type of printing font will be created, and even a team that specializes in the creation of printed characters will be difficult to form.

Under the auspices of Hu Yuzhi, an old pioneer in publishing, Shanghai Printing Technology Research Institute established the Printing Font Research Office in 1960, initially forming a font research and creation team with calligraphy, art workers and old lettering workers as the backbone.

In the 1950s, after the public-private partnerships and factories were established in the 1950s, the factories were slightly scaled up and they successively set up a font writing team. On the one hand, the fonts and patterns were sorted out. On the one hand, simplified Chinese characters were combined and promoted, and new fonts were supplied for printing. plant. After several years of hard work, the Ministry of Culture issued a document to the cultural and publishing departments of various provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in October 1960. “Please organize relevant departments to improve and create new typefaces”. Given the conditions at that time, the article proposed a "font-based design scheme that combines old and new innovations and focuses on the old."

Like calligraphy, fonts are an important part of China’s precious national cultural heritage. Song fonts are popular for centuries and are transmitted to North Korea and Japan. There are many beauty products in the body. These valuable wealth accumulated over a long period of time are both the object of the old and the basis of innovation.

From 1961 to 1963, the font design office of the Shanghai Institute of Printing and the Shanghai Typography Plant designed two texts for the Song and the word's black ones for the “Ci Hai” text, with a total of 17,118 characters. The characteristic of the Song Dynasty is that the fonts are beautiful, fresh, and the style of the simplified and traditional characters are the same. In order to cooperate with the publication of the "Chinese Dictionary," Shanghai Font Model No. 1 Factory has redesigned Song as a single word with about 60000 prefixes. This is the most complete set of Chinese characters in history since the use of cast type in modern China. In 1964, it also designed a 9240-character prefix for Song II which fits in the horizontal layout of the text of "Selected Works of Mao Zedong." This pair of words won a major scientific and technological achievement award at the Shanghai Science Conference in 1978. The song has a beautiful font and well-proportioned strokes. The Song II body gesture is tall and straight, and has a woodcut charm. It is not only suitable for various types of books and periodicals, but also used as a typeset for phototypesetting. It is welcomed by overseas compatriots.

In 1961, the Beijing Xinhua Typography Factory designed the 61-1 Arial to print the vertical edition of Selected Works of Mao Zedong. In 1964, he designed a handsome, elegant 64-1 Song-style and met with readers on the pages of the People's Daily.

Since the late 1950s, Yan Zidong of Gansu Daily has successively designed several new fonts. It began to be used in newspapers such as the People’s Daily in the 1960s and was welcomed by the press and readers. body".

In order to coordinate the promotion of the need for simplified Chinese characters, the Ministry of Culture, the Committee for Reform of Letters, and the Ministry of Education announced in 1964 the “Simplified Words Master List,” which contains about 8,000 words of general general-purpose Chinese characters and requires the printing department to “provide word patterns for simplified characters as much as possible.” Or type characters, use the simplified characters that have been implemented in newspapers and magazines as much as possible.” In order to make the structure of the strokes in the printed characters of Chinese characters consistent with the writing style, relevant departments organize experts to organize the characters in the range of printing common characters and determine each one. The stroke structure and the number of strokes of the word are used as a glyph for uniform printing.

In January 1965, the Ministry of Culture and the Commission for Letters Reform jointly issued a notice and issued the "Printed Universal Chinese Character Form". This form contains 6196 printed Chinese characters.

In the mid-1960s, when the study and creation of typefaces began to flourish, the "Cultural Revolution" began. In this catastrophe, the font research room of the Shanghai Printing Research Institute was disbanded, and the font-writing work of several font-making factories was still at a standstill.

After the "gang of four" was smashed, in 1978, Shanghai Printing Institute resumed the font research room, interrupting the font research work of more than 10 years, and emerged.

In 1980, China Printing Materials Co., Ltd. was commissioned by the State Publishing Bureau to start organizing and revitalizing the basic work related to improving the printing quality of publications. It has repeatedly invited Beijing Xinhua Typography Factory, Shanghai Typographic Factory, Shanghai Printing Research Institute, and Text 6 The relevant personnel of the Chang'e Five Factory jointly discussed the issue of creating new fonts for printing and increasing the number of new types of fonts. At the same time, it also formulated the "Five-Year Plan for Designing and Printing New Fonts (1981-1985)". In 1981, China Printing Materials Corporation issued an initiative to create a new font for printing to "One Factory Three" typeface designers and social calligraphic artists. In December 1982, China Printing Materials Corporation and China Association of Publishing Workers, China Printing Technology Association, Beijing Press Institute, were