works before CertHE (1) book design and typography design for Snow Country
This is designed for Kawabata Yasunari ’s 《Snow Country》 series.
This story is about a researcher named Shimamura from Tokyo having a private meeting with Geisha Koma- ko. In one section of the movie, Shimamura saw Komako’s sister Yoko for the first time through the reflection of the car’s window, it was love at first sight. However, this story has a sad ending of Yoko dying. This story includes the Japanese idea of non-existence and grief. The main character of this book believes that life itself is nonexistent, and that no matter alive or dead, it is meaningless.
Through research I’ve found many pictorial references including photos of northern Japan, stage photos of Snow Kingdom from different eras, and traditional geisha outfits. I’ve also tried to put together black and white photos for the inside pages. In the end, I used white to represent snow and sillouettes of the characters on the snow-white back- ground.
I tired layering the white papers and got an unexpected texture which I used for the mountains in my design.
I’ve also filtered some important scenes from the book and reorganized them and added some of my own thoughts for the inside pages.
Snow is a theme that is used throughout 《Snow Country》, so white is used as the main color along with some black. The architecture, characters and scene are all made from paper-cuts.
I choose to use parchment paper for the book packaging, and designed a type of font that works well with the theme of the story.
This style of calligraphy was especially made for the novel <Snow Country>.
Snow Kingdom is a literature that has a very oriental background, I’ve tried to use modern style to illustrate the story. Initially I wanted to use thread sewn snow-flakes on the cover of the book, but decided it did not match with the whole design.
I’ve found my inspiration through Chinese embroidery.
The fonts uses straight and horizontal lines fixed to 2×6(English) and 4×5(Chinese)squares. This creates a hand-sewn texture.