Orach Technic CJK MANIFEST

What is the Orach Technic CJK Manifest?

This manifesto does not simply mark the preparation of a new writing system
It marks the beginning of a shared vision.

The Orach Technic CJK project was conceived as a bridge between two worlds
the world of ideographs and the world of alphabetic letters.

Unlike many historical manifestos shaped by conflict, power or division,
this manifesto is based on cooperation, respect and continuity

It is an open invitation to shared responsibility, shared knowledge and a shared future
Through design, structure and precision, this project does not seek separation, but unity.

This manifesto represents the preparatory phase of the Orach Technic CJK expansion
It explains our goals, methods and reasons for undertaking this project
It also defines our responsibilities toward the Chinese, Japanese and Korean writing systems

This document outlines the scope and direction of the next major phase of the Orach Technic system
The article Continuity of the Orach Technic Pro Project explains why we originally created Orach Technic Pro
At that time, there was no font that successfully combined technical drafting and graphic design within a single system.
Such a font still does not exist today.

Orach Technic Pro represents a structured approach to technical writing
and lettering and is used in education, training and engineering.

For the same reason, we decided to begin the Orach Technic CJK project.
A multilingual and multi-technical font system equivalent to Orach Technic Pro
does not currently exist in Chinese, Japanese or Korean.

The Unicode Standard currently defines approximately 100,000 CJK ideographs
While some large-scale CJK font projects contain 20,000 to more than 40,000 ideographs,
the vast majority of modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean texts rely on a much smaller
core set of frequently used characters.

As we will discuss later in this document, a relatively small number of carefully selected ideographs
is sufficient to cover the overwhelming majority of everyday communication,
education, technical documentation and professional applications.

CJK fonts also contain many historical characters that are no longer used in everyday writing
These include characters originating from the Han, Tang, Song and Edo periods.
Today, such characters are primarily used for historical and academic research rather than modern communication.

To understand which characters are actually required today,
we searched for a modern Unicode-based list of everyday-use ideographs.
No such public list exists.

We therefore examined educational requirements and literacy standards in China, Japan and Korea.
These programs define two, and sometimes three, levels of essential characters required for literacy and formal education.
All educational character lists were consolidated into three reference documents and aligned with the Unicode standard.

At the beginning of this project, we believed that ideographs sharing the same meaning and the same Unicode value
could also share the same visual form across Chinese, Japanese and Korean writing systems
However, after comparing a number of leading CJK font families, we discovered that many ideographs differ significantly
in their visual design despite sharing the same Unicode code point.

For this reason, modern professional CJK fonts are typically developed as three separate font families,
each adapted to the typographic traditions of its language.

One of the main sources of confusion during our early research was Arial Unicode MS,
a font containing more than 38,000 glyphs.

In this font, a single glyph was often used for the same Unicode ideograph across all three languages.
Later generations of CJK fonts moved away from this approach and introduced language-specific glyph
designs for Chinese, Japanese and Korean users.

After extensive research, we compiled all characters defined by educational authorities in
China, Japan and Korea as necessary for literacy and formal education

This resulted in a combined set of 7,136 ideographs.
In addition, each font includes the 100 standard ASCII characters commonly found on a US keyboard.

Using our own resources, we estimate that the Orach Technic CJK project can be completed by 2028.

Its completion will mark forty years of continuous development of the Orach Technic system.
Together, Orach Technic Pro (5,845 glyphs) and Orach Technic CJK (7,136 ideographs) form two complementary
writing systems designed according to the same technical and visual principles.

It is as if a single person were writing the world's major scripts with one pen and one consistent handwriting style.

The complete project will contain 12.981 characters in four weights, representing a total of 51.924 glyphs.
Its value for engineering, technical communication and education
is something every reader may judge for themselves.

September 2022
infoFORM
Belgrade,
Serbia

www.design.rs

* * *

What we can offer today

Orach Technic Pro 6.35 - All glyphs
(.pdf document, 56MB, 108 page)

Orach Technic STENCIL Pro 6.35 - All glyphs
(.pdf document, 3MB, 60 page)

*Orach Technic Pro is a InfoFORM's (Belgrade-Serbia) font, developed from 1988 to 2025.