Style combination · Contrasts
Guochao × Newtro
China's contemporary heritage trend draws on imperial and folk motifs in red and gold; newtro draws on late-twentieth-century consumer packaging and its mascots.
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.
Guochao (China-Chic National Trend) Newtro (Korean New-Retro)
- Type from Guochao
- Colour from Newtro
- Form from Newtro
- Composition from Newtro
- Surface from Guochao
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Guochao
Again
Kaushan Script, standing in for Bold brush calligraphy (kaishu and xingshu) for hero characters
Text · Newtro
A South Korean branding trend, named 'Going New-tro' in Seoul National University's Trend Korea 2019 (October 2018), in which heritage firms reissue their own postwar to 1990s labels, trademarks and mascots, polished for young buyers. Jinro's sky-blue bottle and toad label (2019) and Gompyo flour's white bear on beer cans (2020) set the look: centred labels and badges, two or three flat colours on pale grounds, brush, cursive or hand-drawn logotypes, often Hanja with Hangul beside them, and a cartoon mascot as hero. Its source is the recent consumer past, reinterpreted, not reproduced.
Zen Maru Gothic; Newtro used Revived label logotypes in Hanja with Hangul beside them, such as Jinro's Hanja name from its 1970s–80s labels and Daesun soju's cursive lettering from its 1965 launch and Thick brush and hand-drawn Hangul display lettering of postwar Korean packaging and shop signboards
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Newtro, with a counter-accent from Guochao. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Guochao (China-Chic National Trend) Newtro (Korean New-Retro)
-
#f4ecd8ground · 36% -
#1c1c1cink · 14% -
#f0b929accent · 18% -
#d7322baccent · 14% -
#1f58a8accent · 10% -
#7cc3e3accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4ecd8;
--ink: #1c1c1c;
--accent-1: #f0b929;
--accent-2: #d7322b;
--accent-3: #1f58a8;
--accent-4: #7cc3e3;
--font-display: "Kaushan Script", cursive;
--font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Guochao (China-Chic National Trend): Guochao often lifts ethnic-minority crafts (Miao silverwork and embroidery, Dai and Mongolian motifs) and intangible-heritage techniques as packaging finishes. Credit and pay the communities and craftspeople whose patterns are used, commission or collaborate with practitioners rather than copying motifs, and remember that dragons, imperial yellow and national symbols carry political as well as decorative meaning.
Newtro (Korean New-Retro): Newtro revives a firm's own archive: for any other client draw on that client's history, not Jinro's toad or Gompyo's bear, which their owners guard. In 2023 the first cans of 7Bräu's Daepyo Wheat Beer, which kept Gompyo's colour scheme and a bear, drew Daehan Flour Mills' warning that copying the brand's design could be unfair competition, and 7Bräu promised a redesign with a tiger. Keep Hangul and Hanja correct and legible, and do not swap in Japanese Shōwa-retro or colonial-era 'Gyeongseong' imagery: a 2018 JoongAng Ilbo column called restaurants that mix Japanese food with Gyeongseong nostalgia 'tasteless', since those who lived through the occupation remember it as 'shameful and painful'.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Guochao
- Nianhua & Chinese Folk Print Pairs well · Redraw door gods, carp and auspicious babies as clean vector characters for limited-edition packaging, keeping each rebus's meaning intact.
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Pairs well · Guochao's streetwear wing already borrows hip-hop lockups; treat a brush character as the tag and keep the heritage palette.
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Contrasts · Western direct-to-consumer brands strip identity to pastel sans-serif minimalism; guochao sells ornament and heritage instead, so use one to test the other.
- Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai Pairs well · Republican-era meishuzi lettering and calendar-poster borders give guochao packaging period depth beyond imperial red and gold.
- Dazibao (Big-Character Posters) Contrasts · Both make huge characters the whole message; compare the handwritten political urgency of the big-character poster with guochao's polished commercial heritage.
- Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China') Contrasts · Guochao shouts Chinese heritage with saturated jewel colours, gloss and folk motifs on packaging; these books whisper it with bare paper, thread, one red and at most a matte gilt edge, so choose between the loud and the quiet national voice.
- Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Pairs well · Guochao branding borrows brush characters and red seals; commission real calligraphy and a properly cut seal instead of a generic brush-texture font and a fake stamp.
- Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio) Pairs well · For China-chic packaging and campaigns, borrow the method (an opera-mask face, scrolling clouds, an ink wash on empty paper) rather than quoting the studio's licensed characters.
With Newtro
- Out-of-Square Hangul Typography Contrasts · Set the modernist, geometric de-squared Hangul of Ahn Sang-soo against newtro's revived brush and cursive label lettering to show two ideas of fashionable Hangul.
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · Both dress a product in the past, but hipster badges invent a Victorian heritage for a new firm while newtro reissues a real firm's own recent archive.
- Synthwave / Outrun Contrasts · Synthwave imagines an eighties that never shipped, in neon gradients; newtro reprints packaging that actually sat on Korean shelves, in flat spot colours.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Newtro's lettering is borrowed from Korean signboards; pair a revived label with real sign-painted shopfronts, as Euljiro's cafés keep their old hardware-store signs.
- Kawaii Design Pairs well · Revived trademarks become cute merchandise and emoticons; push the toad or bear toward kawaii roundness for spin-offs while keeping the label's period lettering.
- Showa and Heisei Retro Revival (Japanese Packaging and Kissaten Graphics) Contrasts · Both revive old everyday graphics, but newtro is Korean heritage-brand reissue with badge-led logic, while this is Japanese katakana-led kissaten and dagashi graphics in pastel spot colour.
- Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu) Pairs well · Both turn a postwar household look into nostalgia for young buyers; pair a reissued retro label or mascot with a floral-cloth band for packaging that recalls a grandmother's home.
- Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi) Contrasts · Both meet on Korean soju shelves: newtro redraws a firm's old label lettering and mascot in flat spot colours, while commercial calligraphy writes a new brushed name in black on a pale label.