Style combination · Pairs well

Contemporary Chinese Book Design × Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

Tea Canon prints its vertical text in the red line grid of the woodblock page and then loosens the grid into black hairlines on its picture leaves; quote the ruled frame on the text pages and let it dissolve where images begin.

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

Mix them and make something Contemporary Chinese Book Design Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, 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.

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') 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
Form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rectilinear
Rules & bars
Composition from Contemporary Chinese Book Design: Generous white space
Sequential narrative
Surface from Contemporary Chinese Book Design: Paper & letterpress bite
Painterly brushwork

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

Calm

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 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') Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

#f1e9d6 ground · 36%
#16130f ink · 14%
#b5342b accent · 18%
#d6c49c accent · 14%
#a8925a accent · 10%
#2e3d5c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e9d6;
  --ink: #16130f;
  --accent-1: #b5342b;
  --accent-2: #d6c49c;
  --accent-3: #a8925a;
  --accent-4: #2e3d5c;
  --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.

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.

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.

A vintage-style bookstore poster has large black Japanese characters stacked vertically in a central panel, with smaller vertical lettering along both sides. Black ruled borders, red four-petal motifs, diamonds and dots decorate a textured cream background.

c. 960–present · East Asia Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) 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.