The other day, Saigoneer posted some beautiful pictures of a movie theater in Vietnam that was recently built in the Art Deco style.
I saw the post just as I was looking at Vietnamese books that the French National Library has digitized, and in the 1930s, there was a definite Art Deco influence on book design.
So, I saved some images from some of the books that I came across.
One of the most recognizable styles of Art Deco typeface (font) is one which has a high contrast between thick and think strokes.
The book above on the left is using that style of typeface, whereas the one on the right strikes me as a creative adaptation of that style.
I’m not sure if an expert on Art Deco typefaces would consider both of the typefaces above as Art Deco. These typefaces might fall into a more specific category, but for our purposes here I am considering them as part of the Art Deco style.
What I find interesting about these books is that while the French constructed buildings that we can identify as Art Deco, these books art only partially done in that style.
They might use an Art Deco typeface, or Art Deco design elements, but rarely do you have all of the elements fitting that one style.
These two above come the closest to following the Art Deco style in their entirety. The one on the right certainly does. As for the one on the left, I think that style of shadow was used in some Art Deco design (I could be wrong there though).
Meanwhile, the book above on the left is a martial arts novel, and it uses an Art Deco-inspired typeface for its title.
Finally, journals also adopted this style, and in the case of Phụ nữ tân văn, we can see that the journal changed its style between April – May 1933.
These are just a few examples, but there is so much that one could learn from studying the covers of the thousands of Vietnamese books that the National Library of France has digitized.
