Style combination · Pairs well

Chinese Calligraphy × Ma

Both treat empty ground as active; let one brushed character and a small seal sit off-centre in a wide, quiet field of paper-toned space.

From the research on Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke)

Mix them and make something Chinese Calligraphy Ma

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Chinese Calligraphy, their arrangement from Ma, the finish from Chinese Calligraphy. 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.

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics

Type from Chinese Calligraphy: Brush & pen calligraphy
Rotated & vertical setting
Colour from Ma: Earth & mineral
Analogous harmony
Form from Chinese Calligraphy: Emblems & badges
Biomorphic curves
Composition from Ma: Dynamic asymmetry
Generous white space
Surface from Chinese Calligraphy: Painterly brushwork
Carved line

The type

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

Display · Chinese Calligraphy

Tide

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Regular script (kaishu) after Ouyang Xun and Yan Zhenqing (the 'Yan style', Yanti)

Text · Chinese Calligraphy

The written art of China and the root of East Asian lettering. A soft, pointed brush writes ink characters in vertical columns read right to left; pressure swells and thins each stroke, and a drying brush breaks into 'flying white'. Five script families run from even seal script to cursive so fast it becomes gesture. In literati work the only colour is the red seal, cut in stone, on pale paper or silk; at the New Year the brush writes couplets and 福 in black or gold on red paper. Carved in steles and plaques, the writing returns as white-on-black rubbings and signboards over doors and shops.

Shippori Mincho; Chinese Calligraphy used Seal script (zhuanshu) and Clerical script (lishu), which grew out of Qin clerks' writing and became the main script of the Han dynasty

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Ma, with a counter-accent from Chinese Calligraphy. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics

#e9e4d8 ground · 36%
#2b2a28 ink · 14%
#7d4e3a accent · 18%
#b8282e accent · 14%
#b9a88a accent · 10%
#d8c7a0 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #e9e4d8;
  --ink: #2b2a28;
  --accent-1: #7d4e3a;
  --accent-2: #b8282e;
  --accent-3: #b9a88a;
  --accent-4: #d8c7a0;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke): Chinese calligraphy and seal engraving are living arts, inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2009 and passed on from master to apprentice, so commission or credit calligraphers and seal carvers rather than tracing their hands, and never present generated writing as the work of a named master. Japanese shodō and Korean seoye grew from this root but are distinct living traditions with their own masters; do not label them Chinese or use this entry as a stand-in for them. Have every character written or checked by a fluent reader: image models produce pseudo-characters, and mirrored, reversed or wrongly ordered characters read as nonsense (the upside-down 福 posted at the New Year is a deliberate exception). A seal is a personal signature and is still used on official documents, so never make a seal bearing a real person's or institution's name without their consent, never copy a historical collector's or emperor's seal onto new work, and remember the seal face is cut in reverse so that the impression reads correctly. Never write a living person's name in red ink, a traditional taboo that marks the condemned and the dead. Buddhist sutras and other devotional texts written as calligraphy should not be cropped into texture or put on floors and throwaway items.