As the Zentangle Method continues to grow in the Mandarin speaking areas, we have been exploring ways to communicate our brand in those communities. This presented an interesting puzzle of how to use a pictographic language to represent English letter sounds. So we combined the two!
We asked the Created With Love (CWL) team in Taipei and Shanghai to explain the background of the characters and the style of this presentation which they chose to integrate with the traditional Zentangle brand.
We think you will enjoy and appreciate the thought and care that went into their process.
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Created With Love staff write:
We are thrilled to take this opportunity to explain more about the literal meaning of "Chan Rao" and why we choose them as the Chinese characters for the Zentangle brand. The word "Zentangle" is a beautiful combination of "Zen" and "tangle". Our initial intention was to figure out the translation for the individual wording.
The Chinese pronunciation of 禪 (Chan) is very similar to "Zen", and it also perfectly matches the English translation. 禪 (Chan) represents a peaceful and meditative mindset.
繞 (Rao) "to unite or knit together" is the translation we use for "Tangle.
" 繞 (Rao) can also be explained as a metaphor of flexibility or freewill creation.
Furthermore, we noticed the pronunciation of the combination, 禪繞 (Chan Rao) has a pleasing attractive that caries a sense of intimacy and well-being.
With all above considerations, we decided to use 禪繞 (Chan Rao) as the Chinese characters of Zentangle.
The 禪繞 (Chan Rao) calligraphy design of these two characters combine two different styles of calligraphy from two Chinese calligraphers. We used their beautiful copybooks with tiny modification.
