Stylogenyin the style of Dazibao (Big-Character Posters)

Counterculture · 1957–1980 · East Asia

Dazibao (Big-Character Posters)

Also known as Big-character poster, Wall posters, Democracy Wall posters

Handwritten wall posters in large brush characters that turned the walls of Mao-era China into a public forum for criticism, denunciation and, at the Democracy Wall, dissent. Written by anyone, in black or red ink on white or red paper, without printed type or pictures, they were pasted edge to edge and over each other until walls, mat screens and corridors became one dense, ever-changing field of text. The right to write them was struck from the constitution in 1980.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

Dazibao were instruments of denunciation: in the Anti-Rightist campaign and the Cultural Revolution they named, humiliated and incited violence against real people, many of whom were persecuted or died. Do not use the look as playful 'Chinese protest' decoration or for mock denunciations of real individuals, have any Chinese text written or checked by a fluent writer, and treat surviving posters and photographs as testimony.

01

How it works

  • Write everything by hand with brush and ink: no printed type and almost no pictures.
  • Make hierarchy with character size alone, a huge headline or slogan over columns of dense argument.
  • Use cheap white or red sheets with black or red ink, and write in vertical columns when the text runs long.
  • Paste sheets edge to edge and over older posters, so the wall becomes one continuous, layered text field.
  • Write fast and in public; the urgency of an amateur hand is the authority.

Precedents in Yan'an wall newspapers of the 1940s; a mass form on Beijing campuses from the Hundred Flowers campaign (Peking University, May 1957), nationwide in the Cultural Revolution from May 1966, and last at the Xidan Democracy Wall, Beijing (1978–79)

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Straight photography, Painterly illustration, Gradients, Full polychrome, Abundant decoration, Offset printing, Generous white space, Naturalistic depiction

Palette

  • #111111
  • #f2eee3
  • #c3272b
  • #e9b9b5
  • #e3cf72

Typefaces

  • Freehand brush kaishu and xingshu

    regular and running script

  • Imitations of Mao Zedong's cursive calligraphy for headings

Known for

  • First critical big-character poster at Peking University

    19 May 1957, Hundred Flowers campaign

  • Nie Yuanzi and colleagues, big-character poster at Peking University

    25 May 1966

  • Mao Zedong, 'Bombard the Headquarters: My Big-Character Poster'

    5 August 1966; circulated, never posted

  • Li Yizhe, 'On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System'

    Guangzhou, 1974; 64 sheets

  • Xidan Democracy Wall, Beijing (1978–79), including Wei Jingsheng's 'The Fifth Modernization'

    5 December 1978

03

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleDazibao (Big-Character Posters)1957–1980 · East Asia

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, 'Big-character poster' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big-character_poster)
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'dazibao' (https://www.britannica.com/topic/dazibao)
  3. Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, 'Exhibiting the Cultural Revolution, Part 1: Reading Big-Character Posters' (https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/?p=27399)

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