Keith Chi-hang Tam

Born in Hong Kong and lived in the UK and Canada, Keith Tam is a Hong Kong-based designer, typographer, educator and researcher with a multicultural perspective. He is currently Assistant Professor at the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he heads the Communication Design discipline and the Information Design Lab. Prior, Keith was Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Emily Carr Institute (now Emily Carr University) in Vancouver, Canada and principal of Keith Tam Design, a typography and communication design studio. In 2005, Keith co-founded Type Initiative with designer Michail Semoglou, a type foundry and design collective. Keith is the designer of Arrival, a sanserif typeface designed specifically for directional signage, currently used at the University of Reading for its campus-wide wayfinding system. In 2011, Keith founded the Information Design Lab at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a research and consultancy unit, the first of its kind in China. The lab focuses on designing accessible and usable information for various contexts and users and explores the interrelationship between typography and information design. 

As a design practitioner, Keith’s work includes book design, information design, identity design, lettering and typeface design. As a researcher and educator, Keith focuses on typography and information design. His work encompasses the history, theory and practice of typography, with particular interest in text typography, typographic structures, complex information and multilingual issues. Recent research projects include bilingual typography in Hong Kong, wayfinding and spatial representation, tourism information design and theory of Chinese typography. Keith is a frequent contributor to local and international design conferences. Recently, he was keynote speaker at the ‘Same/difference: multilingual typography symposium’ held in Hong Kong. Keith received a BDes in Communication Design from the Emily Carr Institute, Canada and an MA in Typeface Design from the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, UK.