Ancient chinese typography
Sometimes being a compulsive eBay buyer can be a good thing. Recently I acquired an old chinese book.
The thing that immediately amazed me is the quality and the variety in the pages layout and the typography. Unfortunately I can’t read japanese, so I don’t understand anything about the meaning of the book.
Interesting headers and table layout.
More table layout with cartoon style drawings.
This page is simply amazing, I would really like to understand the meaning of this page to know why the characters are laid out this way.
Just love the illustration on this one.
Diagramm.
Some more freestyle layout.
This thing is absolutely beautiful, but it is a Chinese book… not a Japanese one… it is a Kung-fu book.
Yes, it is beautiful, but certainly not Japanese.
Wow I feel kind of dumb now, anyway thanks for both of your comments, I corrected it a bit so that it’s more accurate, even though I still have no real information about the book.
… well… I do the same at Japanese or Chinese restaurants… I just try what looks beautiful… and often do not care much where it come from.
It’s an ancient Chinese “Taoist magic figures” book.
ps: Taoism on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism
It’s definitely a Chinese book, with some pages layouted calendar style for geomancy purposes. The octagon are for the eight directions. The third page, captioned “More table layout with cartoon style drawings.” is a timetable which lists what to do by hour.
Alright, just found more info about the book. It’s definitely a Chinese book, but not martial arts. It’s a general encyclopedia for the masses, complete with medical info. In one of those pages, you’ll find details about the different stages of birth – from embryo stage to birth. This info can even be found in very ancient books – the Chinese had researched all this.
However, the information does not stop at “practical” use. There are many “charms” too, which you can copy and paste at your doorstep, bedside, under the pillow etc. The second graphic is a good example. The cartoons all mean some form of pain, and the squiggles are charms.
The third graphic in which the characters are scratching their ears are people hearing weird noises in their ear. The graphics depict a person hearing high-pitched noises in their right / left ear. The table is of the time you hear the high-pitched noises. For example, if you hear it at noon from your right ear, it means that you’re thinking of your girlfriend.
This “people’s encyclopedia” you bought is published yearly, and sold very cheaply (Sing$3.50 thereabouts). It’s always bound in a red cover. The version you bought was probably from Taiwan, because mainland Chinese use simplified Chinese, not Traditional Chinese characters.
can you provide any information on the title. I would love to own this book. or a copy of it. I have never seen anything so typographically or geometrically perfect as the circle in the bottom image. If you can just provide a photo of the cover, i can read the characters.
thanks!
Th.
ohh
This is a “Chinese almanac” for everyone’s info
This is a fate calculating ancient Chinese book. Some example show in first page is the people honored with offical position and his wife honored with Madam position following his honoring. Fllowing is the detailed calculating from the 8 elements of Lao Zi’s Theory. It is very accurate actually.
I also feel amazing that my ancestors are so wise and their books written in this way–from up to down, and left to right and print in opposite way than now. 
With different color of paper; different size of the words–bigger mean important–highlighting with dark ink mean most important or topics; red colored mean focus and important; analysis–different time of the ear noise and eyelid jumping, have different meanings–not all bad, sometimes good-but all related to emotions; the words in cycle is ready for calculating; all important things are from left to right and up to down direction. Turn book from left to right is good for building confident .
I like this way of reading. It is very wise–not only a psychology thing. Now,we are not become wiser than our fathers. 
Sorry, turn book from right to left is better than turn it from left to right to build the confient feeling.
I’m a Chinese student who’s studying graphic design in Canada. lately i’ve been wondering about how’s the typography class gonna be like in Chinese visual communications design classes since i never study that when i was in China. It must be really different i think since there’s sooo many characters in chinese language. I would be really interesting if i got a chance to go back China and visit some design school to see how’s their classes like
This awesome book is medieval, not ancient. No one had printing during ancient times (Han dynasty). People wrote ancient books by hand, calligraphy.
Zhen: There are no specific typography class for Chinese! If there is, it would really be interesting! I ALWAYS have issues with kerning chinese characters…there are, afterall, monospaced~
*they are, afterall, monospaced~