I love bookstores... and books. I simply can't resist them, so every time I buy a book, I try to justify my purchases with thoughts of "well, I can use this for inspiration," or "I can scan that for my sister, so it's like a present. Yeah, yeah!"
This time, it's the truth!
I'm a graphic designer and I love patterns and textures. On my last trip to the bookstore, I emerged triumphant with "The Book of Japanese Design" from 1969. Not only does it have lovely raised-type on textured ivory paper, not only does it have refreshingly non-Western proportions (it's wide and skinny), but OMG it's actually useful!
Yep. I scanned all the drawings. Every single one of them. Surely, graphic designers everywhere will want to download such a pretty set of textures and patterns. Just looking at them makes my little brain work differently.
So, here you go. A zip archive of Japanese patterns and textures from the late 19th century. They are mostly cropped, but you'll have to rotate them if you want to actually use them. The artwork is - as far as I know - in the public domain, and it's scanned at 300dpi, color. There are a few duplicates because I forgot what page I was on :)
Download The Scans
Download Part 1 (10.9 MB, zip)
Download Part 2 (11.0 MB, zip)
Download Part 3 (6.45 MB, zip)
Download Part 4 (11.4 MB, zip)
Download Part 5 (19.9 MB, zip)
More Japanese Design in the future!
I have more in the works - I scored two old "learning Japanese" textbooks from the thrift store, with excellent educational/institutional-style illustrations. I'm planning to scan those in the near future. If you want to be notified, email me. I'm not going to put out a newsletter for this because most people won't be interested, I don't think.
Color Patterns
I don't know how long this site will continue to be up because it seems pretty dead, but Ming-Ling has some great color patterns from yuzen and washi paper. Check them out!
If you use the Japanese designs, send me some photos or artwork!
I want to see what you do with them. I was thinking about making Illustrator vector swatches out of some of them, or Photoshop brushes, but I'm not exactly made of free time...