廖洁连 Liao Jielian

The composition of the layout and the use of frayed threads interest me a lot.

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杉浦康平

Japanese born graphic designer, 杉浦康平



His series of designs

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Formats

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Both using the spine as the unifying point for the whole series.


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Personal: I realise that many of the eastern book design always keep in mind of unifying the books together with book spine and often bounded within many layers. E.g opening flaps, enclose in casing

Minimalist book design

A book on China and Korea Calligraphy.



It amplifies the beauty of the characters stroke with the use of the spine of the book. The cover portrays calligraphic elements like the vertical writings, the whiteness, format of reading it and with contemporary elements of using white space to heighten the effect of the characters.

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Zi Ye

Looking at the book's layout design from the eastern, it reveals the traces of structure that confines the top and bottom as margin with the use of lines. Vertical format for the chinese characters. And the corners, which are normally wrapped with cloth for the binding.

The tradition of symmetry is clearly seen in this design.

One interesting point to note is that the designer the casing of the book reveals the printed title on the cover giving reader layers of surprises as they open the whole package.

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20th century Japanese Book Covers

More covers can be viewed here

China book design competition- little red man story

Out of the many book designs, this design catches my instant attention. Probably due to the very bright and bold use of colours, but not forgetting how the designer managed to bring out the essence of Chinese culture to the most.

Use of red and black, resembling a "chun lian" written during Chinese New year and also through the layout, it clearly shows the connection with the "Tong Shu" 通书 that our ancestors used to refer to; to choose dates for events and to solve daily life questions. Traditional paper cut craft is seen to portray the story of little red man. The use of elaborated Kangxi binding and vertical formats for the text further heighten the essence of chinese book design to its peak.

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