Style combination · Contrasts

Bulaq Naskh Book Printing × Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

Both turned a calligraphic hand into a type for long texts inside ruled frames, but Song–Ming squared the brush into equal vertical cells while Bulaq kept the joined, horizontal flow of Naskh; let a bilingual book show each logic in its own frame.

From the research on Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing

Mix them and make something Bulaq Naskh Book Printing Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, their arrangement from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing, the finish from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

Type from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rotated & vertical setting
Transitional serif

Bulaq Naskh Book Printing avoids rotated & vertical setting: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Colour from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing: Monochrome
Light ground
Form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rectilinear
Rules & bars
Composition from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing: Classical text block
Central symmetry
Surface from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

Public

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Song block-cut regular script after Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan

Text · Bulaq Naskh Book Printing

The page of the Arabic printed book as Egypt's state press at Bulaq shaped it from 1822: justified blocks of black Naskh type on pale paper, often boxed in a ruled frame, with an ornamental headpiece on the opening page, headings set larger or in a second script such as Nastaʿlīq, and almost no pictures. It printed army manuals, laws, textbooks, translated science, the Arabic classics and the official gazette. Calligraphers drew its later types, Mirza Sanglakh and then Muhammad Jaʿfar, whose 1905–06 body type was the basis of the 1924 Qur'an and lives on as Khaled Hosny's Amiri.

Libre Caslon Text; Bulaq Naskh Book Printing used Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh body type, 1905–06, drawn by the calligrapher Muhammad Jaʿfar Bey and Bulaq Naskh and Nastaʿlīq types by the Persian calligrapher Mirza Sanglakh, made for Muhammad Ali's press

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Bulaq Naskh Book Printing, with a counter-accent from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

#efe6cf ground · 36%
#171411 ink · 14%
#7a5236 accent · 18%
#b5342b accent · 14%
#cdbb93 accent · 10%
#2e3d5c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe6cf;
  --ink: #171411;
  --accent-1: #7a5236;
  --accent-2: #b5342b;
  --accent-3: #cdbb93;
  --accent-4: #2e3d5c;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}

Use it with care

Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing: The press also set the Qur'an (the 1924 Cairo edition) and hadith collections such as the Sultaniyya Sahih al-Bukhari, and Bulaq-style Naskh and Amiri are still used for Qur'anic and religious text, so never crop, mirror or distort Qur'anic verses or the names of God and the Prophet, use them as texture, or put them on floors, footwear or throwaway packaging. Set Arabic right to left with correct contextual shaping, have every word read by a fluent reader, never fill a layout with pseudo-Arabic, and never present a generated page as a historical Bulaq imprint.

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho): Have any Chinese, Japanese or Korean text set and proofread by a fluent reader: Song, Mincho and Myeongjo fonts draw some characters differently for each locale, and pseudo-characters, mirrored glyphs or random hanzi used as texture read as nonsense or worse. Pages of Buddhist sutras and other scripture carry devotional text; do not crop them into decoration.