Bending the structural rules

When a broad-edged marker touches a surface, a Chinese character begins to move beyond the familiar order of horizontal and vertical strokes.

As a dip pen moves, the line sharply shifts between thick and thin. Each turn carries the energy of street graffiti while echoing the precision and ornamentation of Gothic calligraphy.

The traditional Chinese character fa, meaning "to prosper" or "to flourish", appears bold and forceful while remaining unmistakably Chinese. It seems to have grown out of traditional calligraphy while retaining the visual intensity of street art.

This fusion of writing traditions lies at the heart of ABS Street Ink, a newly released Chinese typeface by graffiti artist Xu Yan, who blends Gothic calligraphy with the visual language of street graffiti.

Built on the use of broad-edged markers and flat-nib dip pens, the typeface gives Chinese characters a strong sense of movement and tension without sacrificing legibility. It also represents an exploration of how Western lettering traditions can be adapted to the structural logic of Chinese characters.

Xu, 38, is a co-founder of ABS Crew and an early practitioner of graffiti in China. He first encountered graffiti in 2005 while in high school, when the art form remained a niche culture largely introduced through foreign documentaries, magazines and hip-hop culture.

Xu and his classmates began writing their names on walls near their school. For them, graffiti was not simply drawing but a way of expressing identity through writing.

"The simplest way to describe graffiti is writing your own name," Xu says. "In essence, it is writing — and making that writing visually appealing."

Graffiti artists often call themselves "writers", emphasizing the construction of letterforms and personal style. This understanding connected naturally with Xu's childhood training in Chinese calligraphy.

He began practicing brush calligraphy in primary school and later studied printmaking at the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts and public art at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. In 2011, Xu and his team won both the China and Asia championships at Wall Lords, an international graffiti competition in Asia, and ABS Crew later became involved in street art projects and commercial collaborations.

Between thick and thin

The origins of ABS Street Ink can be found not only on city walls but also at the calligraphy desk.

Xu has long been fascinated by Gothic calligraphy, a Western lettering tradition known for angular structures, dense compositions and decorative forms. Written with broad-edged pens, Gothic script creates dramatic contrasts between thick and thin strokes.

Graffiti tools, including broad markers and wide brushes, share similar qualities. Their flat edges allow artists to vary stroke width through changes in angle and direction.

"I use dip pens and flat nibs," Xu says. "The nib is like a thin piece of metal. Its flat shape naturally creates a strong contrast between thick and thin strokes."

This similarity led him to consider whether Gothic writing techniques could be adapted to Chinese characters.

His first experiments date back to 2012, when he explored Gothic-inspired Chinese lettering in his graduation work. Years later, after connecting with FounderType, the idea developed into a complete typeface project.

Xu was already known for his Gothic-inspired "Gong Xi Fa Cai" (meaning, wish you good fortune) lettering, which appeared on hats, footwear, scarves, mahjong sets, and enamel cookware, including collaborations with brands such as Nike.

But that project involved only a few characters. ABS Street Ink required thousands of Chinese glyphs.

Xu created each glyph on a digital tablet, adjusting brush settings to reproduce the marks of a flat nib while preserving the rhythm of handwriting.

"Each character was written directly in one go, rather than created by drawing an outline and filling it in," he says. "Every stroke came from the act of writing."

The biggest challenge was consistency. Chinese characters vary greatly in complexity, and Xu had to ensure that thousands of glyphs formed a unified system — with simple characters not appearing too empty and complex ones remaining clear.

For more than a year, he wrote roughly 10 characters a day and repeatedly revised earlier work.

Typeface designer Xing Hangke says the project demonstrates the difference between creating individual lettering pieces and building a functional typeface.

"A poster or logo can bend structural rules for a particular visual effect," Xing says. "A typeface must remain consistent and recognizable when thousands of characters are entered, combined, and used in different contexts."

Xing compares professional type designers to dancers in shackles, creating to their will within strict constraints.

A distinctive stroke may work well in the first few dozen glyphs but later create problems among similar characters. Designers must constantly adjust forms to maintain the overall system.

"In the end, you have to follow its rules," Xing says. "Some artistic expression will inevitably have to be reduced."

For Xing, ABS Street Ink succeeds because it avoids becoming either loose graffiti lettering or a simple imitation of Gothic script.

"It uses Gothic structure as the skeleton and graffiti strokes as the surface," he says.

Sharing a sense of flow

Adapting Gothic calligraphy to Chinese writing involves more than adding Western decoration.

Chinese characters have their own internal architecture, including structural balance, spatial relationships and the distribution of empty space. Excessive ornamentation can damage recognition.

"Western audiences may not understand the Chinese characters, but they can still recognize the Gothic style," Xu says.

He previously participated in a calligraphy exchange connecting Beijing and Berlin, in which artists wrote together via live projections. Even without understanding the content, participants could sense the rhythm and energy of the writing.

In graffiti culture, this quality is called "flow". In Chinese calligraphy, it resembles the continuous movement that carries the brush's energy from one stroke to the next.

For Xu, this shared sense of movement connects the two traditions. Graffiti may be associated with rebellion and freestyle, but at its core is the creation of a distinctive personal writing style. Chinese calligraphy likewise reflects the personality and rhythm of the writer.

One evolved on paper; the other found its expression on walls and in public spaces.

ABS Street Ink is designed for visually driven applications rather than long passages of text. Xing expects it to appear in fashion branding, music festivals, posters, street culture packaging, film and television titles, esports, and digital media.

In these contexts, typography is not meant to disappear. Instead, it establishes visual identity and emotional tone.

"The fact that this typeface serves a niche audience is precisely what can make it central to a particular field," Xing says.

Common Chinese text typefaces, including Song-style and sans-serif designs, dominate long-form reading because they allow readers to focus on information rather than form. Display typefaces like ABS Street Ink serve a different purpose: to attract attention and carry cultural meaning.

Xing describes the project as "type design driven by graphic thinking": a typeface with the visual impact of an image while remaining a functional writing system.

Chinese type design is increasingly developing at the intersection of culture, technology and visual experimentation.

AI tools, automated font-generation systems and variable fonts are changing production methods, but Xing believes technology alone cannot determine the lasting value of a typeface.

"Technology defines the floor, while culture defines the ceiling," Xing says.

"I hope to see more people using it, rather than limiting it to the way I use it," Xu says. For him, a typeface is complete only when it leaves the designer's hands and enters wider circulation — appearing on posters, packaging and screens, where it continues to develop new meanings in different cultural contexts.