Design Discovery: Vintage Wisdom of Designers from the Past

The amazing typography of the old style shop signs is a irreplaceable property.

What makes Chinese characters (hanzi) design so special (and difficult) is the complicated structure of each character. We often call them "square words" as they are often rectangular e.g. 永勝洋服 (The direction of arrangement in the picture is backward as an old habit back then) and 好好洋服.

What makes a clear (or beautiful) Chinese type is the inner negative space (內白), which is usually impacted by point of weight (重心), horizontal width (中宮) and the stroke weight. To balance the inner negative space, the arrangement of the structure style would be very important, that the designer should keep the type legible enough (which is hard when the structure is complex) but still apply the idea to type. 

In the picture, the designer used a geometric approach, and I like it for the solid stroke and the tiny dots as replacement of the small stroke in the characters.

This kind of sign reminds me of the dedicated craftmanship spirit of the senior designers, who always took care of the details and demonstrated the glimpse of that era.