2018 IXDC | Interview with Ma Yiyuan: Seeking the Perfect Combination of Fonts and Public Welfare

Ma Yiyuan

COO of Hanyi font library, Tsinghua University Law major, Master of Business Administration from School of Management and Economics. He worked in China Printing Science and Technology Research Institute and Keyin Media successively held important positions such as planning supervisor, responsible editor, director of the database business department, and assistant to the general manager. During his tenure, he successively won the "Outstanding Communist Youth League Member" of China Printing Group Corporation in 2006, the "Advanced Worker of the Year 2007", the "Excellent Communist Youth League Cadre of Central Enterprises" in 2011, the "Second Central Enterprise Youth May 4th Medal", "2014 Annual Award China Cultural Industry Development Group Corporation Advanced Worker" and other honorary titles.

The 2018 IXDC International Experience Design Conference provides an opportunity for everyone to share ideas, experiences and practical results. By building bridges across national, cultural and linguistic boundaries, IXDC helps us all gain the global perspective necessary to meet the challenges of the 21st century, making the most of "design diplomacy".

During the five days of the conference, 200 UX elite experts from around the world, more than 1,000 enterprise teams, and more than 3,000 user experience practitioners gathered at the Beijing National Convention Center, through wonderful keynote speeches and special summits , workshops, round tables, design tours, design dinners, design power exhibitions, celebrity interviews... and other series of activities to collide ideas and exchange learning. While preaching and teaching, he also demonstrated the philosophy and demeanor of his team and company.

During the conference, Visual Me had a very pleasant conversation with Ma Yiyuan. We exchanged information on the product trends, brand positioning, and user experience of Hanyi fonts. Mr. Ma also introduced Hanyi fonts to us Some efforts have been made in designing public welfare.

Visual me: Hanyi's product trends The summary is "past, present and future", which includes three aspects: activating traditional culture, realizing the social value of fonts and returning to design creativity. It is still a long-term journey to truly balance the significance of these three. May I ask whether Hanyi has tried some products before it really positioned its own brand product trend?

Ma Yiyuan: Hanyi has made a lot of attempts in terms of products, activating traditional values, users, and innovation, which are the three values ​​of our products.

Since the beginning of making products, Hanyi Fonts has insisted on responsibility. Activating traditional value is our responsibility to font culture, including what value the product can bring to users, and how we should go about it as a design product. Pursuing design innovation and creativity is something we need to consider when making any product.

However, in the process of product development, the application of values There are masters and masters. For example, we will put the value of products to users first, so most products will be oriented by this value to measure how to reflect user value. On the basis of reflecting the value of users, it is necessary to consider the degree of innovation of the product, as well as the aspects that need to be emphasized, such as social responsibility and public welfare matters for the protection of traditional culture. Therefore, we develop based on a product concept that is both primary and secondary.

I really like the saying, "Brand is the category, and category is the product." All products must form a superimposed effect on the brand. It has also made many attempts to generate value for users. For example, the "Flag Black" family series is widely used by technology companies in the field of rigorous text typesetting; the "Full Tang Poetry" shows our great respect for traditional culture; it makes traditional culture younger and more fashionable "Oracle Bone Inscriptions"; and "Alzheimer's Disease" which has assumed a sense of social responsibility; and this year's completely public welfare "Xian Er" font.

In addition, we will also make some experimental concept fonts. The so-called experimental font means that its design method and design point of view will completely deviate from the very mature font design theory and evaluation point of view before. We feel that something like this is very meaningful, because the design industry needs to constantly innovate and be activated. For example, "Bai Jing Ti " and "Liu Zi Hei" can be classified as cutting-edge and exploratory font products.

We hope that through such cutting-edge exploration, we can help product development and the industry's understanding of font concepts, and even guide font products to more social fields and gain more attention, so that we can generate very significant. Based on this understanding, we have carried out a comprehensive layout and exploration of the product.

Visual me:Hanyi earnestly builds brand products, and integrates with social development to innovate and continue, maximize brand value, form a seamless connection between products and users, and walk in the new brand power The front end, strong products and brand strength are very important. As far as the brand positioning of Hanyi is concerned, can you briefly talk about what kind of products are humanized products that truly return to "users"?

Ma Yiyuan:What kind of product is a humanized product? We need to return to the topic of who our brand and products serve. There is no doubt that our products are for the designer group Serve.

Therefore, in the first aspect, the consideration of humanization should be based on the needs of designers. Designers must need products that can solve functional problems, whether they can shorten working hours and help improve work efficiency; second One aspect can be summarized as stylization, the designer pursues the presentation of creative style, after using our products, can it help his creative presentation, and whether it can stand out compared with other surrounding materials; the third is On the other hand, we will consider the expression of emotion and emotion. In today's society, the entire social culture is rapidly diversified and individualized. Young people need to express their emotions and desire to find their role and status in society. We have taken these factors into consideration.

In addition, designers use font products to Designers are living, flesh-and-blood people, so we should pay attention to the more cutting-edge trends and emotional tensions in society. The font product is a product with a relatively long cycle. We maintain a high degree of attention to social trends, emotions and trends expressed by young active groups, predict in advance, and find out what topics they care about, how they express themselves, and what they care about, Recognized aesthetic and visual trends. We will study whether it can be absorbed into font works, or absorb such works and authors to jointly present richer and more humanized products.

Visual me:Fonts and public welfare seem to be two fields that have nothing to do with each other. Hanyi has moved the font public welfare to the real public and realized the "design temperature" in the sense. Hanyi is very good Answered the difficult question of "how to use design for public welfare". Public welfare and design are both things that need to be persisted. Will Hanyi continue to devote itself to public welfare with new products in the future?

Ma Yiyuan: Public welfare is what Hanyi has done in the past two years. We have always had the heart to do public welfare. Industry practitioners who respect culture also hope to express their gratitude to culture. However, for quite a long time in the past, fonts often only played an insignificant role in public welfare activities, and the staff would mention the use of Hanyi fonts to express their gratitude.

In the past two years, we have made some explorations in public welfare activities , also changed the view on fonts, because fonts are more convenient to broadcast and can be used as a medium to convey. It is much more convenient when fonts are used as a medium tool, not just a tool to solve design problems, for public welfare.

From last year to this year, the "Alzheimer's Body" we created together with Shanghai McLeary Bowen Advertising Company won the Cannes Award in the global advertising industry - the Silver Bear Award. By reducing the functionality of this font, it emphasizes Dissemination and media, as well as product attributes that can be used for a long time, have achieved low-cost but extremely wide-spread effects. There is also the "Xian Er" font, which was completed in cooperation with the master of Longquan Temple, and is free for commercial use by the whole society. We think this also reflects our sense of responsibility for culture and the concern for society in Buddhism.

There is also a way to present public welfare, such as the Hanyi Oracle Bone Inscriptions done last year. Although oracle bone inscriptions are not completely free commercial fonts, we have transformed the time-sensitive cultural resources left by our ancestors thousands of years ago into fashionable cultural products available to designers, which is also a great contribution to the spread of traditional culture. This is a great contribution, so we now have a new understanding of the relationship between public welfare and fonts.