Choose one system per page. The system controls source choice, hierarchy, crop logic, and title role.
Use for painting, heritage, landscape, season, city memory, or literary themes.
- Source: one public-domain painting or handscroll scan, plus one crop from the same source.
- Structure: the main crop occupies 45–70%; a smaller detail appears in a non-adjacent field.
- Title: giant Song/Ming type, vertical or edge-cropped. Calligraphy is optional.
- Rhythm: paper margin, date/English label, one mineral or ochre block.
- Avoid: using a whole scenic painting as a polite background with title beside it.
Use for text, books, calligraphy, research, publishing, architecture, or history.
- Source: a stone rubbing, book page, printed fragment, map, or archive document.
- Structure: one enlarged document fragment; another appears as a faded trace or cropped strip.
- Title: one real character sample can act as anchor; other characters stay typeset.
- Rhythm: thin rules, numbered block, grid edge, bilingual metadata column.
- Avoid: covering the page in seals or illegible pseudo-writing.
Use for craft, objects, food, tea, furniture, design, materials, or a brand with a cultural core.
- Source: museum object image, original close material study, or tool/illustration.
- Structure: an oversized hard crop plus one tight macro or silhouette.
- Title: quiet typeset title or a restrained sampled character; the object remains primary.
- Rhythm: labels, scale relation, one accent plate, broad quiet field.
- Avoid: product-ad lighting, full isolated packshot, and generic luxury gloss.
Use for a strong concept, a short title, or city/cultural identity.
- Source: a single image/print source with readable internal texture.
- Structure: one oversized typeset Chinese character becomes a crop window; supporting title characters sit outside.
- Title: typeset for exact readability; use sampled calligraphy only as a secondary interference.
- Rhythm: one aligned information column, a small index block, and source-image echo.
- Avoid: filling every character; one dominant type-mask is enough.
Use for music, fashion, immersive culture, night events, luxury, or an atmospheric material narrative.
- Source: dark-ground material image, archival black-and-white image, lacquer, textile, or original still life.
- Structure: one lit fragment against a large black field; second detail is small and low contrast.
- Title: pale Song/Ming or a single restrained calligraphic glyph.
- Rhythm: narrow warm accent, fine rules, precise small label.
- Avoid: gold effects, red-and-gold festivity, and black background as a shortcut for “high-end.”
The desired visual language is not “Chinese style.” It is contemporary editorial recontextualisation:
- real cultural material becomes a crop, a scan, a mask, or a piece of evidence;
- title and image create intentional pressure at edges;
- small information groups create a reading rhythm;
- typography alternates between evidence (sampled glyph) and precision (typeset text);
- texture belongs to a source, rather than being applied globally;
- each cover has a distinct internal logic.
Small type must carry meaning, not simulate editorial density. Use one coherent sentence or short paragraph tied to the subject, a real caption, or exact supplied metadata. Never scatter one-character fragments, random English, pseudo-labels, or unreadable filler around blank space. If the user gives no copy, write one restrained non-factual thematic line and keep it legible.
Do not let every poster become a giant-title composition. In iterative testing, vary both the editorial system and the title-design strategy:
- one poster may use a large edge-cropped title;
- the next should use a quiet catalogue title, a split inscription, a type-specimen field, an object-label title, or a dense text-field rhythm;
- if two posters share the same title scale, they must differ in title placement, image dominance, metadata rhythm, and source role;
- a regional series may share a family resemblance, but each city needs a distinct typographic behavior tied to its evidence.
Before using a supplied poster as a reference, identify its working relationships: which glyph carries structure, which holds imagery, where the readable title sits, how blank space functions, and how small information sets the rhythm. Those relationships can be useful; their coordinates are not a layout to copy.
For every new output, keep only the subject-relevant relationships. Change at least three structural variables from the reference: title role or scale, image role, dominant axis, reading path, information placement, palette, crop logic, or editorial system. If those changes cannot be named, redesign before generating.
The assets/reference-layouts/ folder contains five approved exploratory outputs from testing. Use them as visual case cards, not as templates:
| Case card | What to learn | What must change |
|---|---|---|
salt-field.png |
macro evidence, severe blank field, quiet edge title | subject, axis, scale relationship, and palette |
weave-specimen.png |
material crop with repeated micro-title | evidence type and title placement |
night-voyage.png |
dark field, one light image strip, restrained title | contrast logic and image position |
woodblock-study.png |
split title block against a document crop | title construction and source role |
archive-field.png |
type built from controlled repetitions on a dark field | density, crop, and reading path |
Do not copy their coordinates, default paper colour, or universal image-inside-type trick. Select one case's relationship only when it fits the new subject.