In Guangzhou I’ve noticed that many residential buildings in the city center are covered with mosaic tiles often creating seemingly random patterns. I don’t know if this is typical for this part of China, or whether is something particular to Guangzhou.
In the mood for a bit of playing around I decided to make a version of the name Guangzhou using some photos I took of the tiles. Using a free font that I found online (made by Fontfabric) I changed the letters into 3D building blocks. Legible? Not so much! Fun? Well I had some, while making this.
> click on the image to see a large version
Tags: Guangzhou, tiles, typography
Hi Gabi
Those tiles are also very common in Brazil, especially in buildings from the fifties.
Santos is particularly full of those, often with large sea-themed mosaique panels embedded into the abstract surfaces and columns.
When I first saw the tiles last year, they very much reminded me also of mediterranean towns, like Ventimiglia. Probably a coastal thing?
in the most parts of china ,we no long use this kind of mosaic tiles ,especially now,so what you can just exist in the building which was built 8 years ago. in the past ,most of people just want to show something ,for example a guy built a first building in our village.at that time he used this kind of ornament, when other people asked him why use this kind of mosaic tiles to adorn his house, then he said :the toff in the city like this”