Illustrated Diary (Kyōsai Enikki)
An 1888 illustrated diary by the Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831-1889), printed as a sequence of ink-sketched double pages with handwritten Japanese captions. The pages are dense with small loose figures of people seated and at work, drawn in quick, economical brushlines. A designer could take from them the idea of a compressed, observational sketchbook layout, with figures scattered across the page and annotated in place rather than arranged in a grid.
