Most of the fonts on the market have gone through a process of convergent evolution to become blocky and conventional. Hui, who previously designed the New York Times’ Chinese logo and a custom typeface for tech giant Tencent, believes that Chinese type design has become stagnant and unoriginal. Now, forced to head home by the pandemic after only six months, he found himself with little paid work, but finally able pursue a passion project that he’d been sitting on for more than six years: Ku Mincho, a radical rethinking of Chinese type. The previous year, he’d quit his “too comfortable and steady” job at Monotype, one of the world’s largest type foundries, and moved to Munich. In 2020, type designer Julius Hui flew back to his native Hong Kong.
