Monochrome Printing and Trademark Design in Modern China: Visual Representation and Communication Mechanisms in the “Invincible” (Wudi) Tooth Powder Trademark

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-737-8_16How to use a DOI?

Keywords

monochrome printing; trademark design; modern China; media adaptation

Abstract

In the 1920s and 1930s, monochrome printing became a widely used mode of commercial image reproduction in modern China because it was inexpensive, efficient, and adaptable across media. Under these conditions, trademark design faced a basic problem: how to maintain recognizability when color information was reduced and visual hierarchy became less distinct. Taking the “Invincible” (Wudi) tooth powder trademark produced by the Household Industry Society as a case study, this paper examines the visual constraints of monochrome printing, including tonal compression and competition for attention in newspaper space. It identifies three common image-processing strategies in modern Chinese printing practice—outline definition, black-and-white organization, and texture control—and analyzes how they were integrated into trademark design through the strengthening of the identification center, the simplification of decorative structure, and the improvement of reproduction stability. The study argues that monochrome printing did not simply reduce visual form, but reorganized it into a recognition-oriented system characterized by structural clarity, tonal hierarchy, and reproducible stability, thereby anticipating later tendencies toward standardized brand identification.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhen Ren
AU  - Zhehao Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/18
TI  - Monochrome Printing and Trademark Design in Modern China: Visual Representation and Communication Mechanisms in the “Invincible” (Wudi) Tooth Powder Trademark
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Art Design and Digital Technology (ADDT 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 118
EP  - 125
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-737-8_16
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-737-8_16
ID  - Ren2026
ER  -