Design · 7 min read
How to Make Chinese Text Images for Posters and Slides
Why screenshotting Chinese text fails, how to get a clean high-resolution rendering, and the layout rules that make Chinese typography look right.
Published
Putting Chinese characters into a design is harder than it should be. You probably do not have Chinese fonts installed, the ones you do have are the system defaults, and the obvious workaround — screenshotting text from a document — gives you a soft, low-resolution image with a background you cannot remove.
This piece covers how to get a clean rendering, and then the layout decisions that separate Chinese typography that looks designed from Chinese typography that looks pasted in.
Why the screenshot approach fails
A screenshot captures at screen resolution, which is roughly 72-144 dpi. Print needs 300 dpi. Scaling up a screenshot produces soft edges and visible artefacts, and Chinese characters suffer more than Latin letters because they contain far more fine detail in the same area — a character with eighteen strokes needs those strokes to stay separate.
Screenshots also come with a background baked in. Removing white from around a character with thin strokes is fiddly, and automatic background removal tends to eat the thinnest strokes along with the background.
And a screenshot is limited to whatever fonts you happen to have. On most machines that means one or two system faces, which are designed for reading rather than display and look bland at large sizes.
Getting a clean rendering
Rendering the text server-side, at a large point size, in a font chosen for the job, solves all three problems at once. You get resolution suited to print, a clean background, and access to typefaces you have not installed.
Three things to check before you download. First, that the font covers every character in your text — coverage gaps are the single most common failure, and they show up as blank boxes. Second, that the rendering is large enough for your final use; render bigger than you need and scale down, never the reverse. Third, that you have the right character set, simplified or traditional, for your audience.
For very large output — a banner, a wall graphic — render one character at a time rather than a whole phrase, so each glyph gets the full pixel budget, and assemble them in your layout tool.
Layout rules specific to Chinese
Chinese characters occupy a square em box, and every character is the same width. This is the fundamental difference from Latin typography and it drives most of the layout rules.
- Do not letterspace body text. Chinese characters are already evenly spaced by construction; adding tracking makes text look broken rather than airy. Letterspacing is a display-only technique.
- Do letterspace short display text. A two- or four-character title benefits from generous spacing — it is a standard device in Chinese poster design.
- Use more line spacing than you would in English. Chinese characters fill their box top to bottom, so lines sit visually closer together than Latin text at the same leading. 1.6-1.8 times the font size is a good starting point for body text.
- Keep line lengths shorter. Because every character is full width, a Chinese line at the same measure carries more visual density. 25-35 characters per line is comfortable.
- Set Chinese larger than Latin. At the same nominal point size, Chinese characters read smaller because the detail is finer. Bumping Chinese up by 10-15% relative to accompanying Latin text usually balances a mixed layout.
- Add a small gap between Chinese and Latin runs. Mixed text without a space between 中文 and English looks cramped; roughly a quarter em is the convention.
Vertical text
Chinese can be set vertically, reading top to bottom and right to left. This is standard in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan for books and newspapers, and appears in mainland China mainly in traditional or decorative contexts — scrolls, signage, book spines, packaging.
Vertical setting carries strong connotations of tradition and formality. It is a good fit for a scroll, a tea brand or a museum piece, and a poor fit for a tech product.
If you do set vertically, watch the details: punctuation rotates and sits in different positions, Latin text and digits need to be rotated ninety degrees or set in a run, and the reading order runs right to left, which means the first column is on the right.
Errors that give you away
Mixing simplified and traditional characters in the same piece. This is the most visible error to a Chinese reader and reads as carelessness. Pick one set and check every character, including ones that look identical but are not.
Using a Japanese font for Chinese text. Shared characters have different standard forms in each language — 直, 骨, 今 and 令 are all drawn differently. The result looks subtly off in a way that is hard to place but easy to notice.
Squeezing or stretching characters to fit. Non-uniform scaling destroys stroke weight relationships and looks obviously wrong. Change the point size or the layout instead.
Faux bold and faux italic. Chinese has no italic tradition at all — slanting characters is not emphasis, it is distortion. For emphasis, use a heavier weight, a different colour, or the traditional emphasis mark (a dot beneath each character). Faux bold thickens strokes until dense characters fill in and become illegible; use a real bold weight from the family.
Not proofreading with a Chinese reader. A character that is nearly right is a different word, and a phrase that is grammatically plausible can still be meaningless. If the piece is going to print, get a native reader to check it.
Key takeaways
- Screenshots give you the wrong resolution, an unwanted background and only the fonts you have installed.
- Render large and scale down; for banners, render one character at a time.
- Use more line spacing and shorter lines than you would for English.
- Never letterspace body text, never squeeze characters, never fake bold or italic.
- Mixing simplified and traditional is the error Chinese readers notice first.
Frequently asked questions
What resolution do I need for print?
300 dpi at final size. For a character printed at 100mm square, that means roughly 1,200 pixels square. Render larger than you think you need — downscaling is free, upscaling is not.
Can I use these images commercially?
The image is yours, but the typeface carries its own licence. For commercial print or a product logo, verify the font licence first. Open-source families such as Source Han and Noto CJK are safe for essentially any use.
How do I get transparent background?
Render on a plain white background and remove it in an image editor using a colour-range selection rather than a magic wand, which handles thin strokes and anti-aliased edges far better.