Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

870 followers 940 following 280 posts

Designer🤹🏻‍♂️artist🤹🏻‍♂️educator. Co-creator of The Hanmoji Handbook, 🦙, 🪳. Editor at Paradise Systems ✍🏽.

Links and things 👀 https://links.byjasonli.com/

Posts Replies Media Videos

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Excited to be a part of the first ever ZINE DUMP zine fair! Will be tabling with my goosey superfriend @emcussen.bsky.social On top of our individual zines and comics, we will be debuting a new joint work for the fair.

Come by Toronto ✨THIS SUNDAY✨

November 7, 2025 at 11:46 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

We are launching the 2025 edition of the ZINE COOP Virtual Party in December, and we are looking for zine friends who want to exhibit their zines and participate. Whether you are a first-time zine maker or a veteran artist collective, all are welcome to apply! 🥰

Apply: airtable.com/appxoXiTT0nn...

A giant pixel art squid flanked by two people on the left side saying "it's party time" and below the water there's a shark and a smaller squid reading. Text set on top of the giant squid says ZINE友 OPEN CALL ONLINE PARTY

November 6, 2025 at 4:53 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Part 3 of 3

Doing the same before and after thing the bottom panel. The text in the overlay reads: The bottom panel update is much more minor: it's simply a rephrasing of the first sentence to make it smoother and to add an alliteration on the "quality quinoa."

Shows our third and final translation, typeset in place.

The annotation for the top panel says: As you can see, we reverted back to the first translation for the top panel.

The annotation for the bottom panel says: But kept the second translation for the bottom panel.

October 7, 2025 at 8:57 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Part 2 of 3

Annotation overlay appears over the top half of the image and says: "We translated it as "the dude" below, but technically it says "big brother" in Chinese. It's always tricky translating older/younger sibling terms into English In this case, since the usage is part of a casual utterance, we went with a casual translation (rather than suddenly dropping "big brother," which would feel like a formal honorific.)"

Shows our second translation of the two panels

The first and second translations of the dialog in the top panel are shown side by side. An overlay appears in the bottom half of the image that says: You can see here that one of us tried to add more detail to the translation to make it more "accurate" to the original text, which mentioned "grain" and "two individuals." But at the same time, they sacrificed the flow/legibility of the speech bubble. It sounds fine in Chinese, but in this English rendition, it's kind of clunky.

Shows the comment one of us later made about how the new translation doesn't sound good in English and that we'll circle back to it later.

October 7, 2025 at 8:57 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Made a series of annotated screenshots showing how we translate comics at @paradisesystems.bsky.social (every script passes through at least 3 sets of eyes)!

Part 1 of 3

Shows the original Chinese script from two panels of a comic about mouse and real estate.

Text overlay appears over the previous image and says: "Every translation we make usually

October 7, 2025 at 8:57 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Tabling with @paradisesystems.bsky.social today in Kensington Market (Toronto) today!

Here till 6 at San Cafe (165 Augusta Ave) 👋🏼

Photo of some signs on a wall: one with an arrow that says “secret”, another with a pair of eyeballs and one that says “this way.” Then in the distance, a doorway into a stall with some prints and zines on a table.

August 31, 2025 at 6:10 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Here's a photo of a sample print I made with my home office Epson Ecotank after running the comic art through p5.riso@home:

A two-page spread from the comic showing a child and her father eating at a dai pai dong.

A close up on one of the pages that shows a two-story tram moving through a street while emitting the classic "ding ding" sounds.

August 7, 2025 at 4:55 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Demo video incoming! I've released a little @processing.org code library to mimic risograph effects locally on your computer, to then print them using a home printer!

It's called p5.riso@home because it builds on p5.riso by @lav.io @tega.bsky.social and riso@home by @jywarren.bsky.social 👇🏼

August 7, 2025 at 4:55 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

And the full-throated commerical embrace of AI was... interesting

My show favorite was this human-like caricature robot, which has a movable head that turns to look at the target and eyes that blink.

SketcherX, an AI-powered live-caricature robot, from XORBIS, in action at the fair.

April 30, 2025 at 5:21 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Here's a sampling of some of the photos from the festival in Seoul, which I happened to be in town for last fall:

A booth featuring the studio’s webtoons, including Study Group (written by Hyungwuk Shin and illustrated by Seungyeon Ryu).

The booth for The Remarried Empress (written by AlphaTart, adapted by HereLee and illustrated by Sumpul) hosted both an elaborate afternoon tea display.

The Beast Friends (written and illustrated by Jaltaesik) booth featured some seriously cute plushies.

The Songsong Books booth was selling books and postcards for its hit webtoon Omurice JamJam (written and illustrated by Kyung-kyu Cho) as well as its other works.

April 30, 2025 at 5:21 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

In the article, I say that 8 of these fonts "act as de facto cultural preservation, being based directly on Chinese typography used on old public signage."

These remixed photos show that in action.

Here's two more:

A photo of an empty urban Hong Kong street where an old man is walking in front of a shop with its shutters closed. The shop's sign shows its Chinese name written in bold Chinese characters, and above the sign is a photoshopped sample of the Blow Up Bei Wei font, set to similar size and colors to show how alike they are. Credits below the photo state that it's the Blow Up Bei Wei font, and that the photo is originally from Airam Dato-on via Pexels.com.

A photo of a bustling Hong Kong market street at night with little canopied stalls in front of taller apartment buildings. There are few signs that stick out from the apartment building, and one of them is for a cookie/cake store that's has red Chinese characters on white panels. Above this sign is a digital rendition of the Lee Hon Kong Kai font, typeset similar in red and white. Credits below the photo state that it's the Lee Hon Kong Kai font, and that the photo is originally from Ehsan Haque via Pexels.com.

March 20, 2025 at 5:43 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Wanted to give my Hong Kong digital fonts research some more love this week, and decided to show them off with some seriously silly photoshopping. First up:

A photo of an urban Hong Kong street at night with neon signs. A digital additional sign has been added that features the Zansyu font, laid out so it fits beneath the other neon signs in the photo. Credits below the photo state that it's the Zansyu font, and that the photo is originally from Jimmy Chan via Pexels.com.

March 20, 2025 at 5:37 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Presenting the most comprehensive list of Chinese fonts made in Hong Kong since the year 2000 💘:

A timeline map with the title Mapping Hong Kong’s Digital Typefaces. On the map are 19 different digital typefaces that have their name written in their own font, and they are clustered together and linked to a timeline running down the middle showing which era of Hong Kong they are referencing in their designs.

March 4, 2025 at 8:25 PM

Jason Li

@jasonli.bsky.social

Whipped this website up the other weekend for an old friend in the run up to the release of her luscious cookbook 🦩 HOT DATE! Sweet and Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, From Party Food to Everyday Feasts 🦩 Very excited to pick up my copy from my local bookstore later this week.