This project is to design a brand album and visual planning system for The Palace Museum, aiming to jointly build the museum's brand temperament with the supreme etiquette of royal culture and the immortal charm of oriental aesthetics.
The design goal is to present the museum's brand characteristics of "inheriting civilization and preserving national heritage" through systematic visual structure and cultural narrative.
The entire volume is themed "Unreadable Beauty. Royal Rituals", integrating the weight of history and the brilliance of art to demonstrate the Palace Museum's international status as a world cultural heritage and the pattern of oriental aesthetics.
design challenge
The Palace Museum is not only the supreme palace of Chinese civilization, but also the spiritual symbol of world cultural heritage. The design needs to achieve the following balance in the visual language: royal sense × affinity: it must reflect the supreme magnanimity of the imperial palace, but also convey the warmth and respect of cultural inheritance; history × contemporary: it must maintain the solemnity of the six-hundred-year-old imperial city, but also show the international vision of a modern museum; collection × narrative sense: it must not only continue the rarity and sacredness of national treasures and cultural relics, but also integrate the open narrative of contemporary design. The core challenge is - how to make the design have both royal respect and cultural resonance, so that the brand has both historical depth and contemporary expression.
Strategy and philosophy
The project takes "royal etiquette and inheritance of civilization" as the core design concept. Visual philosophy: Based on the dual-line logic of "coexistence of respect and inheritance" as the visual basis, it embodies the supremacy of the royal family and the eternity of culture; Structural logic: adopts a collection-level publishing and typesetting system to organize cultural relics and culture in layers to form a multi-dimensional structure of "palace - collection - craft - inheritance"; color system: royal red + royal gold + The main color is ink jade black, supplemented by auspicious cloud patterns and cinnabar seals, symbolizing respect, eternity and ritual order; graphic language: the integration of calligraphy gold ink, wishful cloud patterns, jade lines and royal seal square seals to establish a "visual system under royal order"; cultural expression: the introduction of royal calligraphy, palace scrolls and national treasure images to give the album both a collection and a sense of ritual. The core of the concept: to present royal demeanor through visual etiquette, and to continue the inheritance of civilization through cultural narrative.
Design presentation
Cover design: The main colors are imperial gold and ink jade black, reflecting royal magnanimity and profound eternity; the center uses gold ink calligraphy or imperial seal totem as the visual core, supplemented by hot stamping technology and Ruyi cloud pattern embossing; the title is bilingual in Chinese and English to convey the pattern of world cultural heritage. Chapter logic: 1. History of the Forbidden City; 2. Royal Collection; 3. Royal Seal; 4. Craftsmanship inheritance; 5. Oriental aesthetics; 6. Civilization sustainability.
Interior page design: Modular structure: cultural relic pages and cultural pages are presented alternately, forming a "national treasure × narrative" rhythm; layout design: large-scale gold-ink calligraphy and scroll unrolling forms a visual ritual sense of "unreadable beauty", paying tribute to the tradition of royal rituals; image language: using close-ups of national treasures and cultural relics, the texture of jade silk, and documentary images of palace architectural details to convey rarity and respect; cultural page: introducing imperial pen inscriptions, wishful cloud patterns, and photocopies of ancient books to express the royal spirit. Craftsmanship and materials: The cover uses tactile black card + hot stamping calligraphy + Ruyi moiré embossing; the inner pages are made of high-weight special paper + scroll folding design to ensure a high degree of restoration of the cultural relic images and gold and ink levels. The overall style reflects "the respect of the royal family × the thickness of civilization × the eternity of the East".
Achievements and Impact
As the official collection publication of the museum, this album is widely used in international cultural exchanges, special exhibitions of national treasures, and academic communication. Through the integration of royal logic × cultural narrative × brand order, the design successfully created a visual image of the Palace Museum that "has both historical respect and contemporary expression." The project was considered by the academy as "one of the brand publications with the most royal bearing and cultural depth" and became the core blueprint of the Forbidden City's visual standard system.