A Study On Book Design From The Late Qing Dynasty To The Republic Of China

The period from Late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China is an important time when the Chinese books and periodicals underwent changes from the traditional forms to the modern ones.The academic research of this period focuses either on the description of the form on the design of modern books or on the outline of the development of modern books. This paper attempts to study the development,transformation as well as historical significance of the design forms of modern Chinese books in the multiple contexts of the development of publishing, development of books as well development of arts,crafts and society, aiming to give light to the contemporary Chinese designs.The paper starts from an illustration of book and magazine forms from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China. After detailed analysis of the visual changes in the form development, the paper believes that the evolution of forms is characterized with common development and sudden changes mainly due to cultural transformation. Cultural confrontation led to the resistance of book forms against the old cultural representations. As a result, design had to find inspirations from external sources, giving rise to the prosperity of Form Design Communities.Based on technical requirements, there arose the role distribution in the new production mode of Form Design Communities with editor being the key role and author, artist and etc. around the editor in the chain of production of forms. Form is the result of many different elements working together.The artist, as the main body of Form Design Communities, has great influence the form design. The artist has different insights and capabilities in integrating design resources due to his background, knowledge and commitment, giving rise to rich design practices. Besides, due to the tension generated by the individual representations and external requirements, designers were forced to think about the function, role and value of design forms and put theories into practice, so as to enhance their level of design.Although the form design went into recession because of the war of resistance against Japan, it provides rich guide for both practice and theories and give light to contemporary design.