ASK DN: Where to find Korean, Japanese and Chinese fonts?

almost 8 years ago from Roberts Ozolins, Senior UX Designer

I'm working on a project which is going to be published in a few different languages - Korean, Japanese, Chinese and English. I would like to use a font that looks and feels uniform across all of these languages but I have absolutely no idea where to look for one. There are a few threads about Asian fonts all around the web but nothing really gives me a clear answer.

So my questions are:

Where do I find fonts with Korean, Japanese and Chinese language support?
Is it ok to use different types of fonts depending on the location?

11 comments

Jonathan Suh, almost 8 years ago
Check this out: https://www.google.com/fonts/earlyaccess
There are a lot of fonts with support for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese
2 points
- Roberts Ozolins, almost 8 years ago
  This is great!
  0 points
Paul Jackson, almost 8 years ago
As others have said I wouldn't necessarily stray from the system defaults, there are severe performance implications unless you're going to host your webfonts on a Chinese CDN. Waiting 45 seconds for a webfont to load from a western server (if at all) isn't going to be a nice experience.
The most comprehensive resource I've found for using Chinese system fonts: http://www.kendraschaefer.com/2012/06/chinese-standard-web-fonts-the-ultimate-guide-to-css-font-family-declarations-for-web-design-in-simplified-chinese/
1 point
Zhe Zhang, almost 8 years ago
Take Chinese language for example, it's not practical to use a Web Font in a web application, because the Chinese fonts are huge. Better to use the common fonts available in the user's system.
Found two articles that may help you out:
http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/the-complete-beginners-guide-to-chinese-fonts--cms-23444
http://daoinsights.com/chinese-web-fonts-part-1/
1 point
- Roberts Ozolins, almost 8 years ago
  These will definitely help me. Thanks for sharing!
  0 points
- Frad Lee, almost 8 years ago
  thanx
  0 points
Dimitrie Hoekstra, almost 8 years ago
As far as I know, there are already some great system fonts available on mac for example, plus i believe apple advertised that they updates some of these with El Capitan.
Furthermore, you have Noto font and adobes source sans which are intertwined I believe.
Apart from that, I would love to know more on this topic. Bear in mind that you got different styles from traditional to simplified/modern Chinese > Japanese and everything in between.
Some nice links you can search through: https://github.com/deanhume/typography https://github.com/brabadu/awesome-fonts
1 point
- Roberts Ozolins, almost 8 years ago
  I didn't know that Source Sans supports other languages. That's awesome! Here is an article from Typekit that talks a bout Source Han Sans, an open source Pan-CJK typeface family.
  Thanks for sharing!
  0 points
  - James Mejia, almost 8 years ago
    Have you seen this article on Typekit?
    There was also a shoptalk show episode with Tim Brown mentioning it. They do dynamic subsetting which reduces the weight of your fonts. It's on the article too.
    1 point
    - Roberts Ozolins, almost 8 years ago
      Fast loading times for East Asian fonts? That's something unheard of.. I have't seen this article before but I'll definitely have good read through that now. Thanks a ton!
      1 point
Jason Yeh, almost 8 years ago
Typekit is starting support.
0 points

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