# A crest cut in half by a doorway

> A shop curtain hangs in the entrance and is split down the middle, so its design gets divided every time somebody walks through. That constraint produced a whole way of drawing.

August 18, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/noren-shop-curtain-typography

A bold white emblem on deep indigo. Hard edges, no shading, drawn so that a vertical gap through
its centre would divide it into two halves that each still make sense.

That gap is a doorway. The design was made to be walked through.

## What is a shop curtain?

A short cloth hung across a doorway, split into panels.

It marks a business as open — hung out in the morning, taken in at night — and it half-blocks the
entrance, so a customer has to push through it. Every restaurant, bathhouse and small shop has one,
and it carries the business's mark.

It is simultaneously a sign, a door and a statement about whether you're welcome yet.

## How does the split change the design?

It forces symmetry, and it rewards designs that survive being cut.

A mark on a split curtain gets divided by the gap and further broken as the panels swing. So the
design has to read whole when hanging still, read as two halves when parted, and reassemble when
it falls back. That rules out anything asymmetric or detail-dependent.

What survives is bold circular emblems, thick strokes and high contrast — which is
[precisely what survives on fabric generally](/stories/bold-shapes-survive-fabric). The
doorway and the weave want the same things.

## What is the emblem?

A family or business crest — a circular device with a stylised figure inside it.

These are an old, deep and entirely visual system: a plant, a bird, a tool or a geometric figure,
reduced to flat black-and-white inside a circle, designed to be identifiable at distance and
reproducible by hand at any size. Thousands exist and the vocabulary is well documented.

They function like heraldry and they're much cleaner as design, because the whole system committed
to one colour and one shape.
[Compare a quartered European shield](/stories/mmo-guild-tabard) — same job, opposite
aesthetic.

## Can I use a real family's crest?

Old crests are widely reproduced and generally treated as shared, but a business's mark is a mark.

Historical crests appear on rental kimono, in reference books and on souvenirs, and the system was
never rights-managed in a modern sense. What is owned is a currently trading business's version of
one — a shop's crest is its logo, and it functions as a trademark whatever its age.

Designing a new one is a genuinely enjoyable exercise, and the grammar is tight enough to make it
easy: one subject, radial symmetry, inside a circle, flat.

## What about the writing?

Traditionally there is often a name on it, and leaving it off is the safer version.

A curtain frequently carries the shop's name in large characters — that's the point of it. But
character forms on curtains are usually stylised and hand-drawn, which is the hardest possible case
for getting them right, and
[getting them wrong is the standing risk in this whole section](/stories/kanji-on-a-shirt-what-goes-wrong).

The crest alone is complete and correct. It's how many shops do it anyway.

## Why indigo?

Because that's what the dye was.

Indigo was the workhorse of Japanese textile dyeing — cheap, colourfast, and it deepens with
repeated dips, so the same dye gives a whole range from pale to near-black. The white is the
undyed cloth protected by paste resist, not a printed white.

That process is why the contrast is so absolute. There is no mid-tone available and so the design
never asked for one.

## Does it print well?

About as well as anything can.

Two flat values with hard edges, one bold shape, no fine detail. It reads across a street and
survives any wash. The only decision is scale: the emblem should be large enough that the implied
split runs through something structural rather than through a thin element.

Deep indigo and navy grounds with a bone white ink. One ink, and no reason for a second.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the crest at [JustOG](/) — what's inside the circle, and what the business is. Pick a
direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and
shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

It's out, so they're open. That's the whole message.