Stylogeny combining Japanese Postwar Modernism × Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

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Style combination · Pairs well

Japanese Postwar Modernism × Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

The postwar school set Mincho beside gothic and Latin sans; use a vertical Mincho column beside a flat colour field to give a modern grid a literary voice.

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

Mix them and make something Japanese Postwar Modernism Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

IndexJapanese Postwar × Song–Ming Woodblock
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, their arrangement from Japanese Postwar Modernism, the finish from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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.

Japanese Postwar Modernism Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

Type from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography
Colour from Japanese Postwar Modernism
Form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography
Composition from Japanese Postwar Modernism
Surface from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

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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

Index

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Song block-cut regular script after Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan

Text · Japanese Postwar Modernism

Building on the New Typography that Hiromu Hara and the Nippon Kobo circle had absorbed in the 1930s, Japan's postwar graphic designers fused the grid, sans-serif and objective photography of European modernism with indigenous traditions of family crests (kamon), asymmetry and charged emptiness (ma). From the Graphic '55 exhibition and the Nippon Design Center to Yusaku Kamekura's Tokyo 1964 Olympic posters, it produced bold emblematic symbols, luminous flat colour fields and photography of startling precision.

Zen Kaku Gothic New; Japanese Postwar Modernism used Gothic and Mincho

03

The colours

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

Japanese Postwar Modernism Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)

  • #f4f1ea ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #d7261e accent · 18%
  • #c8a24a accent · 14%
  • #d6c49c accent · 10%
  • #1d3c78 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1ea;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #d7261e;
  --accent-2: #c8a24a;
  --accent-3: #d6c49c;
  --accent-4: #1d3c78;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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.

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The two styles

A large red sun sits above and behind a black triangular mountain with a gold tip on an off-white background. Bold black characters reading “太陽” appear in the upper-left corner. 1950–1990 · East Asia Japanese Postwar Modernism Building on the New Typography that Hiromu Hara and the Nippon Kobo circle had absorbed in the 1930s, Japan's postwar graphic designers fused the grid, sans-serif and objective photography of European modernism with indigenous traditions of family crests (kamon), asymmetry and charged emptiness (ma). From the Graphic '55 exhibition and the Nippon Design Center to Yusaku Kamekura's Tokyo 1964 Olympic posters, it produced bold emblematic symbols, luminous flat colour fields and photography of startling precision. 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.

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