Style combination · Pairs well

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism × Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

From the 1980s Hong Kong designers such as Kan Tai-keung staged ink washes and brush strokes in wide modernist white space; a single graded bamboo or plum spray on a clean field works the same way on packaging or a poster.

From the research on Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

Mix them and make something Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism, their arrangement from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock, the finish from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock. 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.

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

Type from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Brush & pen calligraphy
Colour from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Limited spot colours
Monochrome
Form from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Folk & sacred symbols
Geometric primitives
Composition from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock: Isolated object
Generous white space
Surface from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock: 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 · Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism

Still

Inter Tight, standing in for Sans-serifs for the Latin: Helvetica in Kan Tai-keung's poster for The Arch (1970); a bold sans skewed at thirty degrees in Steiner's 'Progress Hong Kong' (1975)

Text · Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

A kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting. Each picture is cut into many small blocks, one for each part and colour (douban). The water-based colour is partly wiped off to grade it and printed in overlapping tones, so washes take the place of a black outline; on deluxe leaves and letter paper, uninked blocks press white relief into the paper (gonghua). Bamboo, plum, orchids, rocks, birds and fruit stand alone on blank paper, with small red seals and a brushed poem, often on the facing leaf, in albums for learning to paint.

Shippori Mincho; Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock used Brush calligraphy cut into the block and Carved seal characters on the painters' red seals, such as Gao Yang's 'Gao Yang zhi yin', printed beside the signature or inscription

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism, with a counter-accent from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

#f3efe6 ground · 36%
#151515 ink · 14%
#c62a20 accent · 18%
#b08d4a accent · 14%
#d27a7f accent · 10%
#8c8b86 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe6;
  --ink: #151515;
  --accent-1: #c62a20;
  --accent-2: #b08d4a;
  --accent-3: #d27a7f;
  --accent-4: #8c8b86;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese characters, so do not substitute simplified forms, and have every Chinese word in a lockup checked by a literate reader, since image models often invent or garble characters. The style used real Chinese signs and characters for their meaning, such as the coin and 中 of the Bank of China emblem; do not fall back on brush-effect 'chop-suey' Latin fonts or random characters as exotic texture.

Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua): Woodblock printing in watercolour (muban shuiyin) of this kind is still practised by studios such as Duoyunxuan in Shanghai and Rong Bao Zhai in Beijing and is on China's national list of intangible cultural heritage (木版水印技艺, VIII-77: Rong Bao Zhai 2006, Duoyunxuan 2008 and the Hangzhou Shizhuzhai Art Museum 2014): commission or credit their carvers and printers rather than passing off a digital imitation as a hand-printed edition, and never present a generated image as a leaf of the 1633 Collection, the 1644 Letter Papers or the Mustard Seed Garden manual. Have every inscription written or checked by a fluent reader, because image models invent pseudo-characters, and never make up a seal bearing a real painter's, collector's or studio's name.

The two styles

A black junk boat with red sails floats in front of a stylised Hong Kong skyline and grey hills, beneath a large red sun on an ivory background. Bold black lettering at the upper left reads “HARBOUR CITY,” accompanied by red Chinese characters.

1964–present · East Asia Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism The studio design of Hong Kong from the 1960s, made for banks, developers, trade bodies, hotels and cultural events in a city that had to speak Chinese and English at once. Henry Steiner, a Yale student of Paul Rand, and a local generation taught by Wucius Wong, led by Kan Tai-keung, set compact symbols, sans-serif type and white space against quoted Chinese signs: ancient coins, characters, mythical creatures and, from the 1980s, ink washes and brush strokes, often staged as an East–West visual pun. 1626–present · East Asia Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua) A kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting. Each picture is cut into many small blocks, one for each part and colour (douban). The water-based colour is partly wiped off to grade it and printed in overlapping tones, so washes take the place of a black outline; on deluxe leaves and letter paper, uninked blocks press white relief into the paper (gonghua). Bamboo, plum, orchids, rocks, birds and fruit stand alone on blank paper, with small red seals and a brushed poem, often on the facing leaf, in albums for learning to paint.

More combinations

With Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism

With Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

Every style combination