Book Press Layout Art and Design (1)

one. Foreword

The layout of books, newspapers and magazines has the characteristics of extensive information. How the visual effects on the layout and the sense of form are directly related to the dissemination of information. A good layout design can also bring people an elegant art enjoyment. Layout is an art. Like other arts, it has a variety of formal languages. However, before the 1990s, the importance of layout art was not fully valued by people. There were both conceptual and technical reasons. In the era of lead and fire, it is not about art on the layout. Although Gutenberg’s classical design pattern had undergone tremendous changes as early as the 1930s and 1940s, new design ideas and new schools emerged in an endless stream. However, in China, the reform of layouts did not start until the 1990s. The direct reason is the widespread use of computers, which freed people from heavy manual typesetting and embarked on a computer screen, and then entered the era of digitalization, opening up an unlimited and vast world for layout art. The process of this transformation is just in the big environment of China's reform and opening up. The frequent exchanges of various cultures at home and abroad, and the infiltration of various design concepts have enabled China's layout art to develop at a rapid rate. Great results. In recent years, China's layout art has been formally included in the scope of copyright protection, and has gained a place in the art garden.

two. The evolution of layout art

The book layout of our country was very backward. In a quite long historical period, it was mainly based on the classical European model established by Gutenberg in Germany more than 500 years ago. Even the grid layout that appeared in Europe several decades ago, we have only picked up the simplest form of overlapping grids, and we have not fully promoted them, let alone absorb the latest research results of contemporary layouts. Many people think that only the cover design is the art in the books, and the layout design is just a string of words, or treat it as a low-level technical design. This misunderstanding of understanding and the pause of ideas are the main reasons for the long-term lag in book layout.


The innovation of China's books and magazines is in the final years of the end of the century. The first is the market competition caused by the reform and opening up environment, which forces the book industry to make all-out efforts from the content to the form. The layout problem has become one of the areas that cannot be ignored. Followed by the computer's comprehensive replacement of traditional printing, not only solved a series of technical problems in the typesetting, but also provides infinitely rich composition elements and form basis for the layout art. Third, the expansion of people's horizon after the reform and opening up has promoted the rapid renewal of the aesthetic concept. As a result, framing artists once again stepped into this virgin land. Start the layout of the new ideas and the process of integration with the international.

The earliest innovations began with the imitation of foreign design patterns. It is mainly the extensive use of free format. The free format originated in the United States. It is based on the advanced photo-setting technology. It has strong flexibility, emphasizes the sense of form, and has great potential for innovation. In addition, a new objectivist design similar to Germany's John Cheshad and the futuristic design tendencies of Italy's Filipe Malinietti have also emerged. Since then, the framing artists are no longer constrained by traditional designs. They have strengthened the independent aesthetic value of the layout form on the basis of practical functions of the books and magazines. Their common features are to reintegrate the layout of the book into the scope of the modern plane. Therefore, it is particularly active. Compared with traditional design, the evolution of layout composition and the new features of formal elements are also more obvious. It shows that China's layout art has strode into a modern sequence. The following aspects are more prominent

(to be continued)

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