Freehand gestural interaction with direct-touch computation surfaces has been the focus of significant research activity recently. While many interesting gestural interaction techniques have been proposed, their design has been mostly ad-hoc and has not been presented within a constructive design framework. In this paper, we develop and articulate a set of design principles for constructing - in a systematic and extensible manner multi-hand gestures on touch surfaces that can sense multiple points and shapes, and can also accommodate conventional point-based input. To illustrate the generality of these design principles, a set of bimanual continuous gestures that embody these principles are developed and explored within a prototype tabletop publishing application. We carried out a user evaluation to assess the usability of these gestures and use the results and observations to suggest future design guidelines.