Style combination · Pairs well

Chaekgeori × Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

Chaekgeori screens paint stacks of the scholar's books; pair a painted bookcase grid with real ruled, framed Myeongjo text pages for a Korean scholarly identity.

From the research on Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

Mix them and make something Chaekgeori Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Chaekgeori, their arrangement from Chaekgeori, 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.

Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

Type from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rotated & vertical setting
Transitional serif
Colour from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Monochrome
Light ground

Chaekgeori avoids monochrome: this is where the two pull against each other.
Form from Chaekgeori: Rectilinear
Naturalistic depiction
Composition from Chaekgeori: Modular grid
Framed panels
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

Notice

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

Text · Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

The page and letter of the East Asian book. Song block cutters copied the regular script of Tang masters; from the mid-16th century Ming cutters straightened it into a knife-made letter of thin horizontals, thick verticals and triangular stroke ends. Equal square characters run in right-to-left vertical columns in a ruled frame folded at a central column. As metal type in Shanghai and Nagasaki it became Mincho, Myeongjo and the standard CJK text face. Frame, rules and fold column belong to the woodblock page; type keeps the letter, the square and, in Japan and Taiwan, the vertical column.

Shippori Mincho; Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography used Song block-cut regular script after Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan and Ming-style Songti / Mingti, the straightened 'craftsman's' letter, mature by the Wanli era

The colours

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

Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

#f1e9d6 ground · 36%
#16130f ink · 14%
#b5342b accent · 18%
#d9a23a accent · 14%
#d6c49c accent · 10%
#2e3d5c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e9d6;
  --ink: #16130f;
  --accent-1: #b5342b;
  --accent-2: #d9a23a;
  --accent-3: #d6c49c;
  --accent-4: #2e3d5c;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

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.