The community where I live is about 5,000 people. Twenty years ago, this land originally located in the suburbs was developed into a residential area, and residents moved in successively, and I was one of the first residents to live in this community. The residents of this community are generally locals in my city. Because it is relatively far from the downtown area and in a relatively quiet environment, the residents are mostly elderly. The signs in this community usually use traditional standard block fonts（Very standard font, similar to what we see in the dictionary）instead of popular artistic fonts or Chinese-style running script fonts（A unique writing form of Chinese） that look more ornamental, and the text in the signs generally only has a Chinese language and no translations in other languages.
First, the text in signs usually uses traditional block fonts. In the introduction part, I introduced that most of the residents in this community moved in 20 years ago, so there is a large proportion of residents in this community who are older than 60 years old. Elderly people over 60 were born in the last century. For them, the most traditional block font is their favorite and most familiar font. In order to adapt to the lifestyle of the elderly in this community, Most of the signs use this traditional font. At present, young people’s favorite artistic fonts are unacceptable by the elderly in the community. The 68-year-old Mr. Wu, who lives in the community, said, “Only block letters are a symbol of traditional Chinese culture and we have been using them since we were young. The artistic font that young people like now has changed the strokes and format of the text itself, and there are even some signs that make a mistake in a traditional text to highlight the theme of a sign to achieve the purpose of advertising. I strongly disagree. The community uses this artistic font that goes against traditional culture.” （Wu，2020）In addition, many elderly people older than 60 have vision problems, and due to differences in lifestyles, many fonts from the Internet cannot be recognized by elderly people who do not use the Internet often. The problem that the elderly cannot recognize the text information on the signs and affects the quality of daily life of the elderly in the community. Therefore, in this community with a high number of elderly people, in order for the elderly to efficiently obtain the text information on the signs, most of the text on the signs in the community adopts traditional Chinese block fonts.
“ Beware of falling object”
another sign of no parking
“ No electronic bike parking”
Sign of an advertising of milk
Sign of utility room number
Sign of private garage
Sign of no parking
Advertising of sofa renovation（handwriting sign，very rare）
Sign of delivery company
“ Mind your head ”
conference
- Jiangze Wu，（2020，November 17）Interview about the perspective of pop font
