The love of my life is both a book designer and a design artist.

Talking about things has a shell. Between light and shadow, Xiao Fang is cold and warm. Hello, everyone, I'm Brother Tianbei ~

Designing a suitable carrier for tangible words and pictures and building a free sky for intangible thoughts and imagination is not only the mission of book designers, but also their lifelong choice with love and concentration.

The fourth episode of "But There are Books" focuses on the persistence and persistence of three book designers along the way. They integrate unique design concepts and artistic pursuits into book design, endow paper books with different artistic characteristics and aesthetic styles, turn paper books into works of art that spread ideas and culture, and display and carry forward the artistic charm of books.

From cover to text?

The Idea and Practice of Innovation

Over the past 55 years, there have been 1500 books. Ning is the first person to study and practice the concept of modern book design. Ning graduated from the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts, majoring in book art, which can be regarded as an out-and-out "trained background".

In the 1960s, when book design was still limited to cover art design, Ning, with her solid calligraphy and painting skills, designed many book covers with characteristics of the times and historical imprint.

He not only strives for perfection in painting and calligraphy, but also maintains a rigorous attitude when designing offset printing covers, marking out the parameter data of every detail. Ning's work is serious and responsible, and he is deeply appreciated by his predecessors. He has twice won valuable opportunities to study book binding in Japan.

After studying design concepts and techniques in Japan, Jeannin gained a brand-new understanding of book binding, which also made him love his loyal career more and more.

After returning to China, he combined the design concept based on characters with the new technology of grid design, and designed many representative and breakthrough works.

In the last 20 years of designing Chen Yinque, he punctuated the contents of the book and arranged them closely on the cover, showing an atmosphere similar to the contents of the book. The main design of the cover is to choose the photo of Chen Yinque leaning on a stick in the book, which shows the integrity and demeanor of a scholar who "sticks shoes are lighter than horses, and a misty rain will last a lifetime".

Ning's design starts with revealing the ideological core of books and shows the continuous innovation of modern design concepts in details. He is also inheriting the traditional publishing style of "Sanlian" intellectuals' spiritual appeal, practicing the design concept of modern books and promoting the inheritance and development of book design with solid design skills and intoxicated feelings in design.

From art books to academic books

The construction of more possibilities

He Hao is an independent designer. At first, he designed books of various styles for many artists.

He Hao, who couldn't find pleasure in commercial design, happened to take part in an artist's book design. Since then, he has cooperated with artists such as Bing Xu, Qiu Minjun and Rong Rong, and started his own art book design journey.

With in-depth understanding of art and excellent professional ability, Xu Hao quickly emerged in the field of art book design, and designed many personal masterpieces.

He believes that "to design in editing concepts, concepts are like human skeletons, and typesetting is muscle and skin." This is a flesh-and-blood and interdependent relationship.

When designing Bing Xu prints, he and Bing Xu took photos and scanned the original again and again, trying to preserve and highlight the texture of the original on the basis of restoring the prints.

When designing "Nobuyoshi Araki's Sentimental Journey", the bright but not bright yellow and the sunken title are the best interpretations of this photographic work that tells and entrusts with the sadness of life and death.

While constantly filling in his own artistic characteristics, He Hao began to shift from design art books to academic books.

Art books, whether paintings or photos, have visual images created by authors, and designers only need to organize and arrange these visual images. However, academic books convey ideas through words, which leads to thinking and lacks visual limitations, but it also brings more design possibilities and imagination space to academic books.

He Hao regards every design as "rewriting the content". After fully understanding the author's writing style and intention, starting from the content, the book is re-created by using design, so that it can maintain its original ideological and cultural quality in tangible form and has more vivid vitality and aesthetic value.

? From China Calligraphy to Design and Publication

Sculpted natural art?

Bo Ying is an American artist. His artistic inspiration stems from his love for nature. He can always find a way to communicate with the world through his works, whether it is painting with charcoal ash or making portraits of sand and stones and putting them back into the sea.

China's calligraphy is an art form that puzzles Boying. He not only studied calligraphy in China, but also traveled to China to visit the calligraphy on ancient stone tablets.

He founded a personal publishing house and began to contact the design and publication of books. Boying, 27, finished his first book, which is related to calligraphy and his experience as a teacher and friend.

Zhang Chonghe, known as "the last talented woman in the Republic of China", has made great achievements in calligraphy, poetry, Kunqu opera and other fields.

She once went to America with pen and ink and simple clothes and started a comfortable life.

Boying met Zhang Chonghe at a calligraphy exhibition. Since then, he regarded Zhang Chonghe as a teacher, and gradually came up with the idea of editing and publishing his own poems.

He took photos of Zhang Chonghe's manuscript and translated 18 poems selected by Zhang Chonghe into English with Zhang Chonghe's husband Hans Hermannt Frankel.

Bo Ying personally built a hand-operated letterpress printing machine, and used paper and ink very fastidiously. He also found a lettering machine to make the most suitable English fonts for Zhang Chonghe's calligraphy.

The cover of Peach Blossom Fish is made of three different kinds of wood: Indian rosewood, Alaska cedar and African boxwood.

This is because Boying, like Zhang Chonghe, has the same love and yearning for nature. They used to sit in the yard together and talk about bamboo all afternoon.

Just like the sentence engraved on Zhang Chonghe's seal, "Love nature all one's life" is indispensable for poetry, calligraphy and Kunqu opera. The breath of nature leads to unique inspiration, which is transformed into works of art, releasing the breath of nature, and the charm of art is also revealed in this process.

The experience of searching for stone tablets in China made him deeply realize whether wood, pearls, meteorites and even other things in the world can also be the media for recording and spreading.

As a result, Boying began to make bold breakthroughs in book-making materials, and books made of meteorites really became "heavenly books" falling from the sky. He believes that every book will have its own most suitable carrier, and then effectively connect with his inner world and the universe in his brain through smell, color and form, which becomes a natural choice to express his budding ideas and infinite imagination.

From content to life, book designers "lock all meaningful emotions and profound thoughts in that square inch", making artistic temperament and interesting soul the unique charm of paper books.

No matter how fast e-books develop, some books always look at paper books that may be forgotten but will never disappear with quiet and deep eyes.

Because, in the current era of diversified development of reading media, paper books are works of art that can extract cultural core and artistic characteristics from life and give them humanistic feelings and aesthetic value, and because behind every work of art, there will be book designers and artists whose lifelong hobby is to make books.

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When the clouds are light and the wind is light, it is time to make friends. There is a rational analysis of life in film and television works; Football has heartfelt words of youthful feelings; Have real emotional communication feelings about a better life; I have deep thoughts on the forward force in personal growth. While conveying the socialist core values, we should pay attention to our efforts and growth along the way, hoping that we can all become better ourselves.