Stylogeny combining Contemporary Chinese Book Design × Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

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Style combination · Contrasts

Contemporary Chinese Book Design × Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

Lu Xun and Tao Yuanqing made the cover the work: a hand-drawn title and one motif on a plain field, with the untrimmed (毛边) edges that Bu Cai takes up again. In 1996 Lü Jingren and three colleagues called for moving from zhuangzhen (装帧), which by the 1990s had narrowed to dressing the cover, to shuji sheji (书籍设计), designing the whole object: paper, sewing, edges, sequence. Choose between dressing a book and building one.

From the research on Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China')

Mix them and make something Contemporary Chinese Book Design Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

QuietContemporary Chinese × Republican Chinese
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design, their arrangement from Contemporary Chinese Book Design, the finish from Contemporary Chinese Book Design. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

01

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.

Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China') Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)

Type from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design
Colour from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design
Form from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design
Composition from Contemporary Chinese Book Design
Surface from Contemporary Chinese Book Design

02

The type

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

Display · Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

Quiet

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Songti (Song/Ming) lead type for author, publisher and running text, and for plain printed covers such as Huagai ji

Text · Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

The covers of China's New Literature. From 1923 the writer Lu Xun took up cover design in earnest, and from 1924 he commissioned the painter Tao Yuanqing; he called covers with titles inscribed by famous people or set in lead type 'old hat' (老套). A hand-drawn title, two or three flat colours and one symbolic motif sit on a wide, plain field with generous margins. The motif is often taken from Han and Six Dynasties stone carvings, cut into angular silhouettes or, more rarely, painted in free brush. Qian Juntao and Feng Zikai carried the manner on at Shanghai's Kaiming Bookstore.

Shippori Mincho; Republican Chinese Book Cover Design used Lu Xun's hand-drawn and brush-written title characters and Meishuzi (美术字, 'art lettering')

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design, with a counter-accent from Contemporary Chinese Book Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China') Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)

  • #efe8d8 ground · 36%
  • #1e1b16 ink · 14%
  • #e39a2d accent · 18%
  • #b0342a accent · 14%
  • #d4552b accent · 10%
  • #a8925a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe8d8;
  --ink: #1e1b16;
  --accent-1: #e39a2d;
  --accent-2: #b0342a;
  --accent-3: #d4552b;
  --accent-4: #a8925a;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China'): Have every Chinese character set and proofread by a fluent reader: image models invent pseudo-characters, and mirrored or random hanzi used as texture read as nonsense. These are recent designs by living designers and publishers, so commission or credit them rather than copying a prize-winning book's structure wholesale, never present a generated image as one of the award winners, and do not crop reproduced scripture, classics or calligraphy into decoration.

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing): Hand-drawn titles must be real, correctly formed Chinese characters checked by a fluent reader: pseudo-characters, mirrored strokes or random hanzi used as texture read as nonsense, a common failure of image models imitating this style. Tao Yuanqing's and Lu Xun's designs are in the public domain, but Qian Juntao's (he died in 1998) and Feng Zikai's (he died in 1975, so still protected in life-plus-70 countries) are not; draw new motifs, and do not copy an artist's personal seal or monogram as decoration.

04

The two styles

2003–present · East Asia Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China') Chinese book design since 2003, when Shanghai founded the yearly 'Most Beautiful Books of China' award, whose winners go on to Leipzig. The whole book is designed as an object to handle: sewing bared on an open spine, roughened or deckled edges, coloured or gilded fore-edges, blind-pressed marks, leaves left closed at the fold, accordion and loose-sheet formats. Vertical and horizontal Chinese text, ink painting and quiet photography sit in wide margins on cream, kraft and ribbed papers, often with a single red. Large orange Chinese calligraphy sits at the upper left on textured cream paper. A black flowering tree with orange blossoms extends beside simplified village buildings and a stone embankment, with orange ripples below. 1923–1949 · East Asia Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing) The covers of China's New Literature. From 1923 the writer Lu Xun took up cover design in earnest, and from 1924 he commissioned the painter Tao Yuanqing; he called covers with titles inscribed by famous people or set in lead type 'old hat' (老套). A hand-drawn title, two or three flat colours and one symbolic motif sit on a wide, plain field with generous margins. The motif is often taken from Han and Six Dynasties stone carvings, cut into angular silhouettes or, more rarely, painted in free brush. Qian Juntao and Feng Zikai carried the manner on at Shanghai's Kaiming Bookstore.

05

More combinations

With Contemporary Chinese Book Design

With Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

Every style combination