Style combination · Contrasts

Dazibao × Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

The big-character poster is the hand-brushed, crowded, personal opposite of the quiet official printed page; set one against the other to weigh public urgency against canonical calm.

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

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

Three tall bordered columns contain large black brush-calligraphy characters on textured cream paper. Rust-red bars, dots, and small framed symbols of a flower, plants, mountains, an open book, and waves decorate the top and bottom. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Dazibao, the form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, the composition from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography. Not a real or historical work.

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.

Dazibao (Big-Character Posters) Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

Type from Dazibao: Brush & pen calligraphy
Hand-lettering
Colour from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Monochrome
Light ground
Form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rectilinear
Rules & bars
Composition from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Modular grid
Column grid
Surface from Dazibao: Painterly brushwork
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · Dazibao

Civic

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Freehand brush kaishu and xingshu (regular and running script)

Text · Dazibao

Handwritten wall posters in large brush characters that turned the walls of Mao-era China into a public forum for criticism, denunciation and, at the Democracy Wall, dissent. Written by anyone, in black or red ink on white or red paper, without printed type or pictures, they were pasted edge to edge and over each other until walls, mat screens and corridors became one dense, ever-changing field of text. The right to write them was struck from the constitution in 1980.

Shippori Mincho; Dazibao used Freehand brush kaishu and xingshu and Imitations of Mao Zedong's cursive calligraphy for headings

The colours

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

Dazibao (Big-Character Posters) Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

#f1e9d6 ground · 36%
#16130f ink · 14%
#b5342b accent · 18%
#d6c49c accent · 14%
#2e3d5c accent · 10%
#5b564e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e9d6;
  --ink: #16130f;
  --accent-1: #b5342b;
  --accent-2: #d6c49c;
  --accent-3: #2e3d5c;
  --accent-4: #5b564e;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Dazibao (Big-Character Posters): Dazibao were instruments of denunciation: in the Anti-Rightist campaign and the Cultural Revolution they named, humiliated and incited violence against real people, many of whom were persecuted or died. Do not use the look as playful 'Chinese protest' decoration or for mock denunciations of real individuals, have any Chinese text written or checked by a fluent writer, and treat surviving posters and photographs as testimony.

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

1957–1980 · East Asia Dazibao (Big-Character Posters) Handwritten wall posters in large brush characters that turned the walls of Mao-era China into a public forum for criticism, denunciation and, at the Democracy Wall, dissent. Written by anyone, in black or red ink on white or red paper, without printed type or pictures, they were pasted edge to edge and over each other until walls, mat screens and corridors became one dense, ever-changing field of text. The right to write them was struck from the constitution in 1980.

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.