Style combination · Contrasts

Adinkra × Fante Asafo Flags

Both put Akan proverbs on cloth, but adinkra stamps abstract named signs in a ruled grid and kente weaves blocks of pattern, while an asafo flag spells the proverb out as one pictorial scene of appliquéd figures on an open ground.

From the research on Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)

Mix them and make something Adinkra Fante Asafo Flags

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Adinkra, their arrangement from Adinkra, the finish from Adinkra. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)

Type from Fante Asafo Flags
Colour from Fante Asafo Flags: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Adinkra: Pictogram
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from Adinkra: Modular grid
Repetition & rhythm

Fante Asafo Flags avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Surface from Adinkra: Carved line
Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Fante Asafo Flags

Ours

Londrina Solid; Fante Asafo Flags used Embroidered block capitals and numerals naming the company and Company numbers such as 'Nº1' and 'Nº2' in a contrasting cloth or thread, set in the field or along an arm of a large cross that divides the field ('NºI' in red on the bottom arm of a wide golden-yellow cross, Flags of the World 'Crocodiles and moon' flag)

Text · Adinkra

The Akan textile languages of Ghana. In adinkra, named symbols carrying proverbs (Gye Nyame, Sankofa, Dwennimmen) are stamped in black with carved calabash stamps on cloth ruled into squares; kente is narrow-strip cloth woven in named warp-faced blocks of gold, green, red and blue and sewn into checkerboards. Pattern is a vocabulary: each motif and colour is chosen for its meaning.

Archivo; Adinkra used Adinkra stamped glyphs as a pictographic set and Ghanaian hand-painted sign lettering for accompanying text

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Fante Asafo Flags, with a counter-accent from Adinkra. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)

#f0e9d8 ground · 36%
#1b1b1b ink · 14%
#f2b31b accent · 18%
#c62a2f accent · 14%
#1e3a8a accent · 10%
#3a9a9a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e9d8;
  --ink: #1b1b1b;
  --accent-1: #f2b31b;
  --accent-2: #c62a2f;
  --accent-3: #1e3a8a;
  --accent-4: #3a9a9a;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems: Adinkra symbols and kente patterns are named, proverb-bearing Akan heritage, and some kente designs were historically reserved for the Asantehene and royal lineages. Learn each symbol's meaning before use, keep sacred signs such as Gye Nyame out of trivial or demeaning contexts, and commission or credit Ghanaian stampers and weavers (for example in Ntonso and Bonwire) rather than printing faux kente.

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa): Asafo companies are living institutions of Fante towns: each flag belongs to its company, is commissioned when a new captain takes office, is danced at festivals and members' funerals and hung at the company shrine, and its image is often a taunt aimed at a particular rival company. Do not copy a company's flag or emblem for branding, learn what a motif says as a proverb before using it, since a scene can boast or insult, and do not pass off a new flag sewn with a Union Jack as a colonial-era piece: workshops have made flags for collectors and tourists in record numbers since the mid-1990s, including new flags made to look pre-independence. Company imagery has carried political stakes: under colonial rule the British administration imposed strict regulations on asafo companies and their arts. Commission and credit Fante flag-makers' workshops rather than printing imitations.