Book Design,Illustrations and Aesthetic Features in the Song Dynasty

Generally speaking,the design of Diaoban books in the Song Dynasty reflects significant features of plainness and simplicity.This is closely related to the fact that the Diaoban technology and book were invented in Chinese folk first and its agricultural culture.The plain and simple book shape design established in the Song Dynasty made the books spread widely,and became a mass medium in the spatial sense actually.The Diaoban printing became the basic shape of books after being widely used in the Song Dynasty.The Diaoban books in the Song Dynasty established the earliest model of paperback in the book history.The carving books in the Song Dynasty used different typefaces,font sizes and special symbols to distinguish or mark different editing languages,making the editing languages in the layout and its functions rather clear.The editing languages together with its book stylistic rules and layout fixed the basic pattern of layout editing languages in the Diaoban books in ancient China,which have been used in Chinese Diaoban books after that.Illustrations of books were very common in the Song Dynasty.The widely application of illustration made the books in the Song Dynasty abundant and elegant,not only letting the books' contents more integrated,meaning more plentiful,but also making the viewing and reading outcome more ideal,and thus the communication of books' text knowledge and significance became more lively,intuitive and colorful.The best books in the Song Dynasty,just because their special style and charm,and no same ones in typeface used in writing and carving in the two kinds of books,were the beauty of orthography books.The beauty of books in the Song Dynasty lies in the books' inner beauty of culture spirit of the Song Dynasty.