Oracle Bone Inscriptions → bronze inscription → seal script → official script → regular script → running script.
(Shang) (Zhou) (Qin) (Han) (Wei and Jin Dynasties) cursive script
The seven fonts of the above-mentioned "Jin Jia seal, Cao Li and Xing Kai" are called "seven-body Chinese characters"
It is well documented that China script, Chinese characters, came into being in the late Shang Dynasty, about14th century BC, when a preliminary stereotyped script, namely Oracle Bone Inscriptions, was formed. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is both a hieroglyph and a phonography. Until now, there are still some pictographs in Chinese characters, which are very vivid.
In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters developed into Da Zhuan. The development of seal script has produced two characteristics: first, the lines with uneven thickness in the early days became uniform and soft, and the lines they drew with utensils were very concise and vivid; Second, standardization, the glyph structure tends to be neat, and gradually deviates from the original shape of the picture, laying the foundation for the square characters.
Later, Li Si, the prime minister of Qin Dynasty, simplified Da Zhuan and changed it to Xiao Zhuan. Small seal script not only simplifies the shape of big seal script, but also achieves the perfection of lineation and standardization, almost completely divorced from pictures and characters, and has become a neat, harmonious and very beautiful square font which is basically rectangular. However, Xiao Zhuan also has its own fundamental shortcoming, that is, its lines are very inconvenient to write with a pen, so almost at the same time, a kind of official script with flat sides was produced.
By the Han Dynasty, the official script had developed to a mature stage, and the readability and writing speed of Chinese characters had been greatly improved. After Li Shu, it evolved into Cao Zhang, and now it is grass. In the Tang dynasty, there was Weeds, which expressed the writer's thoughts and feelings with a pen. Subsequently, regular script (also known as original script), a combination of official script and cursive script, became popular in the Tang Dynasty. The print we use today evolved from regular script. Between regular script and cursive script is a running script, which is fluent in writing and flexible in using a pen. It is said that it was invented by Liu Desheng in Han Dynasty, and it is still the font used in our daily writing today.
In the Song Dynasty, with the development of printing, block printing was widely used, and Chinese characters were further improved and developed, resulting in a new type of calligraphy-Songti printing font. After the invention of printing, the carving knife used for lettering had a far-reaching influence on the glyph of Chinese characters, resulting in a kind of printing font with fine horizontal and thick vertical, which is eye-catching and easy to read, and later called Song Style. There are two kinds of fonts for the moment: fat imitation face, Liu style, thin imitation European style and dangerous style. Among them, the strokes of Yan and Liu are towering, with some characteristics of horizontal, thin and vertical. In the Ming Dynasty, between Qin Long and Wanli, it changed from Song style to Ming style, with fine strokes and square fonts. It turned out that at that time, a kind of Hongwu style with thin horizontal and thick vertical was popular among the people, and this font was used for the title cards of official posts, lanterns, notices, private stones, ancestral halls and other gods. Later, some book carvers created a non-face and non-European skin silhouette in the process of imitating Hongwu's style. Especially because the strokes of this font are horizontal and vertical, it is really easy to engrave. It is different from seal script, official script, original script and cursive script, unique, fresh and pleasing to the eye. Therefore, it has been widely used since16th century and has become a very popular main printing font. It's also called Song Style, and it's also called lead font.
In Chinese characters, all kinds of fonts formed in different historical periods have their own distinctive artistic characteristics. For example, seal script is simple and elegant, official script is static and dynamic, rich in decoration, fast in cursive script, compact in structure, neat and beautiful in regular script, easy to read and write, practical, diverse in style and different in personality.
The evolution of Chinese characters is from pictographic pictures to linear symbols, strokes adapted to brush writing and printed fonts convenient for carving. Its evolution provides rich inspiration for China's font design. In character design, if we can give full play to the characteristics and elegant demeanor of various fonts of Chinese characters, we will certainly be able to design exquisite works with ingenious application and unique conception.
Since the unification of Qin Shihuang, China characters have gradually embarked on the road of development. China characters in different times have distinctive national and folk customs, and the history of China characters is deeply engraved with the wisdom and hard work of China people. However, now some people know little about their own language, but their enthusiasm for other languages is still half-toned. Words are the soul of a country. In order to understand the changes, history and soul of the motherland, we chose this topic.
With the development of Chinese characters, after China was unified by Qin Dynasty, Chinese characters were constantly simplified and sorted out, which made them gradually standardized. The development of Chinese characters can be roughly divided into four stages: ancient prose, seal script, official script and regular script. Among them, seal script is divided into big seal script and small seal script; Lishu is different from Qin Lishu and Lishu. It can be seen that any new font in history has been gradually formed through long-term evolution. Generally speaking, after the formation of regular script, China characters have been basically finalized (table 1).
(Table 1: Evolution of Chinese Characters)
1 Oracle Bone Inscriptions
Before the Qin Dynasty unified Chinese characters, China's Chinese characters were still confused in font and application. In a broad sense, ancient Chinese includes the characters before Xiao Zhuan, and also includes Da Zhuan. In a narrow sense, it refers to the characters before Dazhuan in the history of China characters. Here, the narrow concept of ancient prose is adopted. Ancient prose includes Oracle Bone Inscriptions and inscriptions on bronze; Among them, the former is considered as the earliest stereotyped writing in China.
Oracle Bone Inscriptions: Most of the characters left on tortoise shells and animal bones by writing or carving in the late Shang Dynasty are "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" and a few are "notes". Most of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's characters conform to the principles of pictographic characters and knowing characters, with pictophonetic characters accounting for only 20%. Its characters are carved with a knife, some filled with cinnabar, and some written directly in ink. Because characters are mostly evolved from pictures and characters, they are pictographic, multi-character, and the strokes are uncertain. This shows that China's writing was not unified in the Yin and Shang Dynasties.
Image Inscription in the Yin Dynasty: In the pre-Qin period, copper was called gold, so the words cast on bronze ware were called inscriptions, also known as Zhong Dingwen and Qi Yi. Compared with Oracle Bone Inscriptions, bronze inscriptions are more pictographic, showing ancient characters. The writing style of bronze inscriptions makes the image vivid.