Details
The image
Five vertical columns of brush writing, each in a different colour, black, red, green, blue, yellow, overlapping their neighbours so the text becomes a woven surface. The colours are printed flat, with no shading, so the characters read as shapes before they read as language.
Where it comes from
Brush writing has served as ornament in Japan for centuries, on screens, scrolls and packaging and modern graphic design inherited the habit of treating characters as forms as much as words. Turning text into pattern is one of the central moves of twentieth-century visual communication and it is why a poster like this can be understood without reading a single character.
On the wall
It wants width rather than height: a long wall behind a sofa, a hallway, the space above a low sideboard. Because the colours are strong and evenly distributed, it holds a large area without needing company. In a quiet room it works as the single piece of colour; in a busier one it ties other objects together.
In company
Pairs well with wood and with pale walls and it can carry a whole wall on its own. In a group it works as the loudest element, so the others should be quieter and smaller. Two of them stacked vertically read as a single column of colour, which suits a narrow space between windows. If the wall is to hold another sheet, the rest of the Japanese collection follows the same rules.
