Style combination · Contrasts
Acid Graphics × Internet Ugly
Acid Graphics' 'New Ugly' is rendered by professionals in chrome and 3D; Internet Ugly is ugly because it is quick and amateur. Decide which kind of ugly a brief needs before borrowing either.
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Acid Graphics / New Ugly Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular
- Type from Internet Ugly
- Colour from Acid Graphics
- Form from Internet Ugly
- Composition from Acid Graphics
- Surface from Acid Graphics
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Internet Ugly avoids chrome & 3d render: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Internet Ugly
Noise
Anton, standing in for Impact (Geoffrey Lee, Stephenson Blake, 1965), set white with a black outline
Text · Acid Graphics
A late-2010s club and poster style that updates 1990s rave graphics with modern 3D tools: liquid-chrome and melting lettering, neo-tribal spikes, wireframes, op-art patterns and acid-green palettes on black, mixed with blackletter and stretched grotesques. Associated with David Rudnick, Studio Cryo and Anja Kaiser and collected on Instagram's @acidgraphix, it overlaps with the 'New Ugly' turn towards deliberate antidesign.
VT323; Acid Graphics used Liquid-chrome and melted custom lettering and Blackletter and neo-gothic display
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Acid Graphics, with a counter-accent from Internet Ugly. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Acid Graphics / New Ugly Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular
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#000000ground · 36% -
#ffffffink · 14% -
#ccff00accent · 18% -
#fff200accent · 14% -
#ff1ad9accent · 10% -
#00a2e8accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #000000;
--ink: #ffffff;
--accent-1: #ccff00;
--accent-2: #fff200;
--accent-3: #ff1ad9;
--accent-4: #00a2e8;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "VT323", monospace;
}Use it with care
Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular: Most meme templates are photographs of real people, often children, or licensed stock. Success Kid is Laney Griner's son: the photo has been licensed to advertisers, and in January 2020 she sent a cease-and-desist letter to a congressman whose fundraising campaign used it without permission. Distracted Boyfriend is microstock, and its photographer says use without a proper licence is not allowed. License a template or make a new picture for commercial or political work. Check what a format means now: some characters that spread through 4chan were taken up as hate symbols (the ADL listed Pepe the Frog, Matt Furie's 2005 Boy's Club character, in 2016, while noting that most uses are not hateful). Reaction images of Black people posted by non-Black users and brands read as digital blackface (Lauren Michele Jackson, Teen Vogue, 2017), and deep-fried memes came out of Black Twitter, so credit where formats come from. When brands and campaigns borrow a format, its makers often protest or drop it (Douglas).
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Acid Graphics
- Neo-Swiss Revival Contrasts · Set a single liquid-chrome wordmark inside a clean neo-Swiss grid so information stays legible around the spectacle.
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Pairs well · Graffiti wildstyle letter structures translate naturally into chrome 3D renders for gig posters and merch.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Acid graphics defines itself against Corporate Memphis' friendliness; lean into the contrast to signal underground credibility.
- Techno-Futurist Graphics Pairs well · Borrow The Designers Republic's corporate-parody logos and tiny technical captions to give acid layouts a systematic backbone.
- Rave & Acid House Graphics Pairs well · Acid graphics is rave's digital heir; reuse the chrome logotype and fluorescent-on-black palette with contemporary 3D tools.
- Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type) Pairs well · The collective's banners share Acid Graphics' blackletter, spiky stars, gradients and chrome-like lettering; borrow that repertoire for a manifesto banner or flyer, but keep the post-binary glyph legible as the subject rather than the surface effect.
- Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics Contrasts · Acid graphics renders polished chrome and adds glitch as a finish; glitch art breaks the file and keeps what comes out. Decide whether a brief wants spectacle or exposure.
- Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition Pairs well · Its club-poster revival: acid graphics mixes blackletter with liquid chrome, ultra-wide grotesques and pixel faces. Render one broken-letter wordmark in chrome on black and leave the parchment, rubrics and justified page behind.
With Internet Ugly
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Both make amateur, cheap reproduction a stance; combine ransom-note cut-ups with Impact captions and crude pasted photos for zine-style posters that still read as a joke.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Drop one rage face or Impact caption into a strict Swiss grid to show how much of design's authority comes from polish.
- Brutalist Web Design Pairs well · Put MS Paint drawings and image macros on a raw-HTML page of default fonts and blue links; both treat software defaults as honesty rather than lack of taste.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Brand-safe flat illustration is what meme makers mock; a brand that borrows meme templates risks the backlash Douglas describes, as communities drop co-opted formats.
- Indie Sleaze Pairs well · Both live on casual web platforms and refuse polish; Indie Sleaze takes the music-scene snapshot where Internet Ugly takes meme vernacular.
- Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics) Contrasts · The meme vernacular is its ironic other and the language of its parodies: crude, found and knowing where the slideshow is polished and sincere.
- 'Good Morning' Greeting Images (WhatsApp Forward Vernacular) Contrasts · The same forwarding networks with the opposite intent: borrow the meme's speed and template logic, and even its jokes, but keep the greeting affectionate rather than ironic.
- Forum Signature Art (Sig & C4D Render Graphics) Contrasts · The crude, ironic meme dialect of the same forums; sig art aims at the opposite, a slick and earnest technical finish.