Traditions & vernacular · 1950–present · East Asia
Hong Kong Neon & Beiwei Shop-Sign Lettering
Also known as Hong Kong neon signs, Beiwei kaishu signboards (北魏楷書), Kowloon neonscape
The night-time signscape of Hong Kong's Kowloon streets. Shop names written by commercial calligraphers in Beiwei kaishu, a square, heavy, chisel-edged script descended from Northern Wei stone steles, were bent by neon makers into glass tube and cantilevered over the road. Vertical Chinese, horizontal English, double-line borders and trade emblems such as the pawnshop's bat and coin stack into a dense canyon of light, thinned by signboard controls since the 2000s.
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01
How it works
- Write the shop name in Beiwei kaishu: square, heavy strokes with angular, chisel-cut terminals that read as strong and stable.
- Stack the characters vertically on a sign projecting at right angles from the building so it reads from far down the street.
- Trace letters and borders in double tube outlines of saturated red, pink, green, blue and orange against the night.
- Add one emblem silhouette (a cow, a fish, a rooster, the pawnshop bat holding a coin) so the trade is legible without reading.
- Pair vertical Chinese with a horizontal English or brand name on the same sign.
- Compete for attention by scale and overlap, accepting a dense, flat streetscape instead of a single focal point.
Hong Kong, especially Kowloon (Nathan Road, Mong Kok, Yau Ma Tei, Sham Shui Po)
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
- Surface & texture
- Ornament
- Medium & production
- Tone & intent
- Avoids
- Generous white space, Pastel, Earth & mineral, Straight photography, Modular grid
Palette
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Typefaces
Beiwei kaishu (Northern Wei stele-style regular script), as written by Au Kin-kung
Zansyu (Adonian Chan, Trilingua), digital Beiwei revival
Double-line neon-tube outline lettering
Latin capitals and scripts for English shop names
Known for
Au Kin-kung, commercial calligrapher whose Beiwei hand dominated mid-century shop signboards
Sammy's Kitchen neon cow by Sammy Yip
c. 1978; M+ collection, removed 2015
Kai Kee Mahjong parlour rooster sign, one of M+'s first two neon acquisitions
Nam Wah Neonlight & Electrical Mfy design-drawing archive
M+
NEONSIGNS.HK online exhibition
M+, 2014
Adonian Chan, Zansyu digital Beiwei typeface
Trilingua
03
Make something in this style
Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Hong Kong Neon & Beiwei Shop-Sign Lettering’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.
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.
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.
- Neon signs over Portland Street, Mong Kok, at nightVarious Kowloon neon workshops and commercial calligraphers; photograph by UCLARodent · photographed c. 2006 (uploaded 13 January 2007) · Wikimedia Commons (own work by the photographer)
- Neon signs of Ching Cheong Pawnshop (正昌大押)Unrecorded neon workshop; photograph by Lord Jaraxxus · photographed 30 November 2020 (sign undated) · Wikimedia Commons (own work by the photographer)
- Neon signs of a Hong Kong nightlife street, 1971 (slide '578a Hong Kong 1971')Various sign makers; photograph by Wilford Peloquin · 1971 · Wikimedia Commons (from the photographer's Flickr stream)
- Sammy's Kitchen neon cow signSammy Yip (Sammy's Kitchen); photograph by Trent Bigelow · sign c. 1978 (M+); photographed 28 October 2006 · Wikimedia Commons (from the photographer's Flickr stream); sign now in M+, Hong Kong (gift of Sammy's Kitchen, 2013)
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06
Sources
- https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/collecting-neon-signs-from-hong-kongs-streets/
- Kwok Sze Hang, 'Dis/re-appearance of vernacular Chinese letterform of Beiwei Kaishu in Hong Kong', Proceedings of Typography Day 2019
- https://eyemagazine.com/feature/article/typographics-21-session-6
- https://www.designboom.com/art/m-interactive-exhibition-map-hong-kong-neon-signs-07-31-2014/
How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.