Stylogeny combining Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement × Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

Try

Style combination · Pairs well

Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement × Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

Lu Xun launched the woodcut movement in 1931 and edited woodcut books such as Yinyu ji; a black carved print on a pale cover with a drawn title joins the two.

From the research on Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)

Mix them and make something Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

No!Chinese Modern × Republican Chinese
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement, their arrangement from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement, the finish from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement. 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.

Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement 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 Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design avoids naturalistic depiction: this is where the two pull against each other.

Composition from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement
Surface from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement

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

No!

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 Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)

  • #efe8d8 ground · 36%
  • #1e1b16 ink · 14%
  • #e39a2d accent · 18%
  • #d4552b accent · 14%
  • #8b2b22 accent · 10%
  • #8c7b62 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe8d8;
  --ink: #1e1b16;
  --accent-1: #e39a2d;
  --accent-2: #d4552b;
  --accent-3: #8b2b22;
  --accent-4: #8c7b62;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

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

A black-and-cream woodcut-style illustration shows a tightly packed group of armed people advancing through rubble, led by a large foreground figure gripping a rifle. A woman carrying a child appears at upper left, while soldiers, an artillery piece, smoke and ruined buildings recede beneath the Chinese lettering “前進”. 1931–1949 · East Asia Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement The leftist print movement launched by Lu Xun's 1931 Shanghai woodcut workshop, which made the self-cut black-and-white woodcut China's art of national crisis and revolution. Young artists learned from Käthe Kollwitz, Frans Masereel and Soviet woodcuts to gouge close-up, diagonal images of workers, refugees and resistance for journals, books and travelling exhibitions; in Yan'an after 1942 they adopted New Year print outlines and colour for peasant audiences. 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 Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement

With Republican Chinese Book Cover Design

Every style combination