Thursday 21 January 2010

How to Make a Chinese or Japanese Book Cover (Epilogue)

In the comments to the last post, Matthew Adams draws attention to another side of Asian literature in the West: "I reckon every book that comes out of Asia should have a kung fu master, ninja or samurai on it. And the really good books would have all three on the cover." Even better would be one that had a ninja AND everything else from the previous post. So here we go: the ultimate Asian book cover...


3 comments:

Bob Fingerman said...

Everything but the font. That reminds me too much of Tiki design. Maybe something more Chinese takeaway food menu-style, like this: http://www.dafont.com/shanghai.font

But, yeah, pretty much nailed it.

Matthew Adams said...

Q:What typeface is that?
A:Stereotype.

I love it. It's like chinese takeaway.

The really sad fact is that the western books I have seen that have been translated into Japanese often have beautiful orignal covers on them by Japanese designers.

And JRSM, I suspect you have too much time on your hands (unless you actually found that cover on the web, in which case....I am lost for words). I hate it when I get time all over my hands, it's stinky and doesn't wash off.

JRSM said...

Bob: That Shanghai font would have been the one! I just chose the most offensively obvious font I had to hand, which was called Bamboo Chopsticks, but that would have been better.

Matthew: I was technically being paid to do something else at the time, so it was time well spent.