Style combination · Contrasts

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design × Shanghai Modern

Same city and decades, opposite intent: calendar posters model glamorous women in soft polychrome with ornamental borders, while New Literature covers leave a plain field to one flat, symbolic motif and a drawn title.

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

Mix them and make something Republican Chinese Book Cover Design Shanghai Modern

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Shanghai Modern, their arrangement from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design, the finish from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design. 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.

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing) Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai

Type from Shanghai Modern: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Shanghai Modern: Naturalistic depiction
Borders & frames

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design avoids naturalistic depiction: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Composition from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design: Generous white space
Dynamic asymmetry
Surface from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design: Paper & letterpress bite
Flat

The type

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

Display · Shanghai Modern

Rose

Limelight; Shanghai Modern used Meishuzi and Songti

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')

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design, with a counter-accent from Shanghai Modern. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing) Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai

#efe8d8 ground · 39%
#1e1b16 ink · 15%
#e39a2d accent · 20%
#b8322f accent · 15%
#1f5f5b accent · 11%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe8d8;
  --ink: #1e1b16;
  --accent-1: #e39a2d;
  --accent-2: #b8322f;
  --accent-3: #1f5f5b;
  --font-display: "Limelight", sans-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.