Style combination · Pairs well

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design × Taishō Roman

Feng Zikai found Takehisa Yumeji's lyrical drawings in Tokyo; Yumeji's soft line suits the quiet, literary register of these covers.

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

Mix them and make something Republican Chinese Book Cover Design Taishō Roman

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Taishō Roman, 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) Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

Type from Taishō Roman: Hand-lettering
Rotated & vertical setting
Colour from Republican Chinese Book Cover Design: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Taishō Roman: Distortion & exaggeration
Stylised figuration
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 · Taishō Roman

Reverie

Federant, standing in for Art Nouveau-style Latin display lettering

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 Taishō Roman. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing) Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

#efe8d8 ground · 36%
#1e1b16 ink · 14%
#e39a2d accent · 18%
#b8333a accent · 14%
#8b2b22 accent · 10%
#d98b8f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe8d8;
  --ink: #1e1b16;
  --accent-1: #e39a2d;
  --accent-2: #b8333a;
  --accent-3: #8b2b22;
  --accent-4: #d98b8f;
  --font-display: "Federant", 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.

The two styles

Large orange Chinese calligraphy sits at the upper left on textured cream paper. A black flowering tree with orange blossoms extends beside simplified village buildings and a stone embankment, with orange ripples below.

1923–1949 · East Asia Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing) 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. 1910–1940 · East Asia Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration The lyrical illustration (jojōga) of late-Meiji to early-Shōwa Japan, led by Takehisa Yumeji: willowy, large-eyed women in kimono drawn with an Art Nouveau contour, set among camellias and kimono patterns and lettered by hand. Made for sheet-music covers, girls' magazines, postcards and paper goods, it is intimate and melancholic rather than ornamental, and its eyes and moods passed through Nakahara Jun'ichi into shōjo manga.