What usually people try to edit the characters with those categories

Based on a original character, designers tried different ways to break the tradition rules in order to make something that is creative, unique, contemporary. Hence, there are some common ideas that people usually try to edit the characters with those categories.

1)symmetry
-There are quite a lot of words having symmetric characters in traditional Chinese characters.
-Hence, it is a good way to make the characters into mirrored symmetric character as it looks really amazing, attractive and artistic.
-Symmetry makes characters become more legible because it makes the character more like pictogram, however, it can only be done in some characters that are symmetrical.
-Most common way of symmetry is reflection.

2)Adjusting stroke weight

-Adjusting different levels of stroke weight can create a strong contrast to viewers 

-Also, alter the thickness of a character will still keep the shape but does not change the character a lot. 

-As a result, it makes the character look more dynamic and active to customers.

3)Using geometric shapes or make simplification of characters -Since traditional characters are really similar to the geometric shapes especially rectangle and triangle, designers usually use these shapes to replace the strokes of the characters rather than keeping the complex strokes. -By reduced the complicated strokes, it can produce a simpler character on the logo.

4)Calligraphy/cursive writing style/Classical Chinese

-The traditional Chinese calligraphy is one of the culture of Hong Kong so some brands used it into their logo.

-The traditional Chinese calligraphy provided the tradition beauty to the logo if it used on a brand.

-So it looks more attractive to customers

-Classical Chinese is the ancient writing format of Chinese characters, it looks more like pictograms so it increased the legibility of the logo.

5)Using with English

-As some brands want to use both languages in their logo to make it more like an international brand, they put English under the traditional Chinese characters.

-So designers have to consider which typeface should they use to make both languages match.

-One of the most common pair is “Kozuka Mincho” working with “Didot Bold” where both typefaces are quite modern style and have strong contrast. 

Categories that can try to work with traditional Chinese characters

There are several ways to editing traditional Chinese characters from the original characters based on its specific structures, by editing the characters to form some unique, creative and modern characters to fits the market in Hong Kong.

1)Reduce the strokes of traditional Chinese characters
-As most of the original traditional characters are quite difficult to write or look complex. Hence, people tried to reduce the number of strokes by replacing some strokes with geometric shapes having similar shapes.Also, reducing the numbers of strokes made characters look simpler. It is different to English or other latin languages characters, as most strokes in traditional Chinese are straight line so it is easier to use some geometric shapes such as triangle, rectangle or square, etc to replace the strokes.

2)Change the writing order of strokes/writing direction

-As traditional Chinese characters are formed by different strokes, people tried to use other things to replace the strokes. Changing the strokes can make the character look more contemporary. The characters became more flat and not rounded comparing to the standard writing which look more friendly.

3)Classical Chinese characters/calligraphy -Because of the tradition beauty of the calligraphy, it makes the character looks more familiar and more legible. It looks more like a pictogram rather than a word.

4)Breaking down the characters into different sections/parts

-Due to the fact that traditional Chinese characters are formed by different radicals or strokes, therefore, some designers tried to separate the character into different radicals or strokes in order to make it unique. 

-However, it may looks messy once mixed the character into different parts so this categories may only suitable for brands that think the characters on their brands don't need to be readable.

5)Multi languages on the same design -A common combination is joining English and traditional Chinese characters as it showed the inter-connection on both languages, one from east and one from west. -So people usually join a stroke from English and a stroke from traditional Chinese character and then form a word either in English or traditional Chinese.

A CROSSING LANGUAGES

Normally, in the English system, it just contains alphabets and sometimes with numbers. Also, in the English system, there is limitation to limit how people write, it means for example, when people write the date, they can only either write the year “2018” or “two thousand and eighteen” but not “two thousand and 18”.

In traditional Chinese system, it is totally different, it is allowed that people can write in different format, using "2018" as the example again, the original writing of 2018 in traditional official writing characters should be “二零一八 ”. However, the character "零" has too  many strokes in the character “零” so people started to write “ 〇 ” to replace the previous one, it is just a wider version of “0” so that it looks parallel with other characters. The sound of “〇” is same as “零”, therefore, people won't get confuse even though used a different word.

SYMBOL AND SPACING

In English and traditional Chinese, punctuations are almost the same, both languages have comma, exclamation mark or question mark, etc. But there are different ways to write these punctuations. Basically, in English, these punctuations are written close to the baseline which means these punctuations are written next to the bottom of the word. While, in Chinese system, a punctuation takes the space of one full character and put in the middle of the line. Moreover, the full stop in traditional Chinese looks different with the one in English, it is a small circle rather than a black dot.

X-height

In the English system, the upper half of the x-height and the ascenders of the characters are more important and differentiated than from the lower half of the x-height and the descenders. For example, the lower part of the characters on the lower case of a, g, p and q are more differentiated. When the upper half of x-height are covered, it is really difficult to see the text. However, if the lower half is covered, it is still able to read the text.

In the traditional Chinese system, the roles of the upper and lower half are equally important because the characters were formed by different radicals and it can be mixed around and form a new or different character. Therefore, if half or any part of the character is covered, it may becomes another character and people may get confusion by that. Hence in traditional Chinese system, both the upper and lower half are important.

READING SPEED

In English, reading is more like saccades which means when people is reading English, their eyes usually spring quickly along the lines. A lines is perceived in a series of saccades, followed by a large saccade as the eye jumps back to the left to start the next line. Hence, people usually read English faster, because people read English words with a full sentence rather than every single word. 

But it takes longer time to read in Chinese characters because they have more than thousands of characters and each character has its own meaning. Therefore, people take longer time to understand the meaning of the character. 

DIRECTION OF WRITING/READING

It is true that in Hong Kong, all newspaper have horizontal and vertical paragraphs but people can still read through the newspaper quickly, it does not cause any problem, however, there are no vertical texts appear on the western newspapers such as the “Metro” newspaper, all sentences from the newspaper are horizontal.

In horizontal text, the orientation of individual letters (vertical) is orthogonal to the spatial arrangement (horizontal) of letters within the word. Vertical text can affect either the orientation of individual letters or the orthogonal relationship between letter orientation and word orientation.