My two Also partners, Matt and Jenny, recently took a trip adventure to China and brought me back two amazingly beautiful big paperbound design books. This one seems to be about print design- advertisments, book covers, brochures from 1900 to 1950. It’s all in Chinese so if anyone can help translate the title- which I’m not even sure is the title- let us know. There’s something about the texture of the paper in this book- close to soft newsprint paper- that makes it so nice to touch. It’s interesting to see the many design choices in page layout where their characters can read vertically or horizontally. I love when the characters are stylized- scripty looking or big and bold with a drop shadow. There’s also a lot of funny cartoonish illustrations, traditional looking patterns and photos of gorgeous women mixed in to the designs. Apparently Matt and Jenny who don’t speak any Chinese had to just keep pulling books off of shelves to see what they were since they couldn’t read titles or subject sections. Luckily they happened across this one. Thanks guys! If you are interested in the book- here’s the publisher. I couldn’t get the English to work on their site so here’s also the isbn 978-7-5013-3530-5/K- 1543

© Julia Rothman 2007