Style combination · Pairs well
Adinkra × Pacific Barkcloth Design
Both are gridded ceremonial cloths of named motifs; borrow their shared square-by-square logic for a layout, while keeping each motif tied to its own culture and meaning.
Mix them and make something Adinkra Pacific Barkcloth Design
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.
Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design
- Type from Pacific Barkcloth Design
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- Colour from Adinkra
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Pacific Barkcloth Design avoids full polychrome: this is where the two pull against each other.
- Form from Adinkra
- Composition from Adinkra
- Surface from Pacific Barkcloth Design
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Pacific Barkcloth Design
Ours
Permanent Marker, standing in for Freehand-painted numerals and capitals on ngatu, from length markers to commemorative inscriptions
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
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Adinkra, with a counter-accent from Pacific Barkcloth Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design
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#efe2c4ground · 36% -
#151412ink · 14% -
#e3a51caccent · 18% -
#b9772faccent · 14% -
#b52a1faccent · 10% -
#7d3a1faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe2c4;
--ink: #151412;
--accent-1: #e3a51c;
--accent-2: #b9772f;
--accent-3: #b52a1f;
--accent-4: #7d3a1f;
--font-display: "Permanent Marker", 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.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design: Tapa is women's ceremonial wealth, made collectively and presented at weddings, funerals and the investiture of chiefly titles; particular motifs commemorate events, lineages and royalty, and some designs belong to families, villages or chiefly lines. Commission and pay tapa makers and their work groups (such as the koka'anga in Tonga), credit the island and the maker, and do not lift motifs from museum cloths onto products or treat Tongan, Samoan, Fijian and Hawaiian traditions as one interchangeable 'Polynesian' pattern.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Adinkra
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · A modular grid holds adinkra squares naturally; pair them with a neutral grotesque for contemporary Ghanaian institutional work.
- Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth Pairs well · Adinkra stamps dark signs on light cloth while bògòlan leaves light signs in a dark mud-dyed ground; use the reversal for a light and dark pattern pair, with each motif's meaning and makers credited.
- Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics Contrasts · Saturated, meaning-dense repetition versus quiet emptiness: decide whether your message needs abundance or a single sign.
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics Pairs well · Treat adinkra as a consistent icon family on a strict grid, as Isotype did with pictograms, for wayfinding or data with local voice.
- Afrofuturist Design Pairs well · Afrofuturist identities draw on adinkra; render named symbols as glowing or metallic glyphs while keeping their meanings intact.
- Amazigh Sign System & Tifinagh Contrasts · Both are sign systems that carry meaning, but adinkra stamps named symbols into a ruled grid of squares. Amazigh weavers and tattooists vary the size and spacing of their signs by hand within bands and lattices, and share them with a script.
- Andean Woven Graphic Systems Contrasts · Adinkra stamps named symbols into ruled squares and kente joins woven strips, whereas Andean cells are woven into one garment and distorted toward its edges; keep the two languages distinct.
- Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa) Contrasts · 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.
With Pacific Barkcloth Design
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Two earth-toned inks on cream stock and a slightly broken, rubbed impression give print work tapa's material warmth without copying its motifs.
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · A ruled grid already underlies ngatu; set text in a neutral grotesque within the same squares for exhibition and institutional graphics made with tapa makers.
- Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design Contrasts · Kōwhaiwhai flows in curvilinear koru bands while tapa is ruled into squares filled with angular repeats, a reminder that 'Pacific pattern' is not one style.
- Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop) Contrasts · Tiki menus borrowed tapa-like zigzag bands as mere borders; real ngatu, siapo and kapa are women's ceremonial wealth with named motifs, so set the two side by side to see what was flattened, and commission tapa makers rather than copying their patterns.