Style combination · Contrasts

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography × Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture

Both are woodblock canons cut from a calligrapher's copy, but the Chinese page runs in vertical columns of square cells on a folded, sewn leaf, while the pecha runs horizontal lines across loose oblong leaves descended from Indian palm-leaf books.

From the research on Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)

Mix them and make something Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, their arrangement from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, the finish from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography. 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.

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)

Type from Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture: Brush & pen calligraphy
Hand-lettering
Colour from Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture: Monochrome
Full polychrome

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography avoids full polychrome: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rectilinear
Rules & bars
Composition from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Modular grid
Column grid
Surface from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture

Civic

Yatra One; Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture used Uchen (dbu can, 'with a head'), the headed script of print, written out by monk calligraphers as master copies for the block cutters and Umê (dbu med), the headless cursive of everyday handwriting

Text · Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

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.

Shippori Mincho; Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography used Song block-cut regular script after Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan and Ming-style Songti / Mingti, the straightened 'craftsman's' letter, mature by the Wanli era

The colours

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

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)

#efe6cf ground · 36%
#1c1a17 ink · 14%
#e3b02e accent · 18%
#b5342b accent · 14%
#d6c49c accent · 10%
#2f5aa8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe6cf;
  --ink: #1c1a17;
  --accent-1: #e3b02e;
  --accent-2: #b5342b;
  --accent-3: #d6c49c;
  --accent-4: #2f5aa8;
  --font-display: "Yatra One", cursive;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", 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.

Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags): Pecha, icon prints and prayer flags are sacred objects in living Tibetan Buddhist and Bön practice. The Kangyur is the Buddha's word (hence its cinnabar ink), icon prints guide the painting of deities, and flags carry mantras, the four dignities and prayers for a named sponsor. By tradition flags are not put on the ground or worn as clothing, and old ones are burned rather than thrown away. Do not use real or imitation pages, mantras or flags as texture, party bunting, fashion prints or logos, do not crop or mirror them, and have any Tibetan written or checked by a fluent reader. Image models cannot write Uchen and invent letters, so leave text areas blank in generated images and never present one as a real text or flag. Derge still prints by hand from its historic blocks, while Narthang's main halls were razed in 1966: credit and commission Tibetan calligraphers, carvers and printers, in Tibet and in exile, rather than tracing their blocks.

The two styles

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. c. 1410–present · East Asia, South Asia Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags) Tibetan Buddhist and Bön woodblock printing, from the first printed Kangyur (1410, cut in China) and the 15th-century presses of Gungthang to the great printing houses of Narthang, Derge and Lhasa. Books take the pecha form of Indian palm-leaf pothis: long, unbound oblong leaves of headed Uchen script, justified with syllable dots, cut in reverse from a calligrapher's copy and printed in black, or in cinnabar red for the Buddha's word. The same workshops cut icons, mandalas and prayer flags: a wind horse ringed by mantras, printed on cloth in five element colours and left to fade in the wind.