The document describes the process taken to design Chinese characters representing the Finnish word "vihta", or birch whisk. The designers first considered objects from Finland with rich backgrounds and descriptive elements, settling on birch whisk. They listed words related to birch whisk and sketched draft characters using bone script symbols. The final characters were generated by combining basic symbolic elements in an understandable way, with the noun character derived from the verb. The characters evolved over time from the original bone script forms.

1. Birch whisk as a Chinese character
Jiongkai Zhang, Markus Tammi, Taro Morimoto

2. Introduction to Chinese character system

3. Choosing a Finnish object for the character
● First we listed some objects
● Requirements for an object
● Originally from Finland
● Rich background
● Several describing elements
● In the end there were two candidates
● Lure Fishing and Birch Whisk
● We abandoned Lure fishing
● Character combination already
existed
● Finnish origin was in doubt
● At the end we chose VIHTA

4. Basic elements of the characters
●Next we listed words related to vihta
and the process behind using it
●Using the related words or concepts
we made sketches by using bone
script symbols
● We ended up with draft versions of
the characters (verb and noun)
●Later we discarded the draft version
of the noun

5. Generating the character
●Chose the basic elements that make
up the final characters
● Chose a symbol for each element
●Combined selected symbols in an
understandable way
●For the noun we used a subset of the
verb character
● After this stage we had ended up the
the final versions of the characters

6. The evolution of the characters
● Characters are evolved from original bone script
● First, strokes are simplified in Qin dynasty (220 BC)
● After Qin dynasty the stokes of the characters became gradually more straight

7. The final form of the modern characters
wei wei
The noun The verb
Calligraphy
By pen By brush In print Earlier