Style combination · Pairs well

Amar Chitra Katha Comics × Arab Children's Comic Magazines

Another postcolonial children's comic that teaches heritage in flat colour; combine its narrated caption boxes with the Arab weekly's gag strips and puzzle pages.

From the research on Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)

Mix them and make something Amar Chitra Katha Comics Arab Children's Comic Magazines

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Arab Children's Comic Magazines, their arrangement from Amar Chitra Katha Comics, the finish from Amar Chitra Katha Comics. 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.

Amar Chitra Katha Comics Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)

Type from Amar Chitra Katha Comics: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Amar Chitra Katha Comics: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from Amar Chitra Katha Comics: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

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

Display · Amar Chitra Katha Comics

Notice

Londrina Solid, standing in for Upright hand-lettered capitals (dialogue in round speech balloons, evenly spaced and drawn by hand)

Text · Arab Children's Comic Magazines

Arabic children's comics weeklies, from Dar al-Hilal's Samir in Cairo (1956) to Abu Dhabi's Majid (1979), mixing translated Western strips with house characters by Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian and European artists. Pages read right to left: flat bright full-colour panels, rounded cartoon children in local dress, hand-lettered Arabic balloons and drawn sound effects, shared with quizzes, puzzles, contests, letters and lessons, under a boy mascot who names the magazine. The look is that of the colour weeklies of the 1950s to 1990s; Majid went monthly in 2020, redesigned by Studio Safar.

Archivo; Arab Children's Comic Magazines used Hand-lettered Arabic balloon text, read right to left and Drawn Arabic onomatopoeia and expressive balloon lettering

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Arab Children's Comic Magazines, with a counter-accent from Amar Chitra Katha Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Amar Chitra Katha Comics Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)

#f6f0dc ground · 36%
#1d1a17 ink · 14%
#f6c928 accent · 18%
#e8772e accent · 14%
#e23b2e accent · 10%
#6fa3d8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f6f0dc;
  --ink: #1d1a17;
  --accent-1: #f6c928;
  --accent-2: #e8772e;
  --accent-3: #e23b2e;
  --accent-4: #6fa3d8;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Amar Chitra Katha Comics: The series, its covers, characters and sunburst logo belong to its publisher (Amar Chitra Katha Pvt Ltd) and its artists: draw your own figures, covers and badge, never ask an image model for an ACK title or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page as an ACK comic. Many of its subjects are deities whom readers worship, so do not mock, crop or deface them. Scholars have criticised the series for giving heroes extremely fair skin while coding dark skin with violence, brutality and low caste, for casting Muslims as either secular heroes or zealous villains, for drawing the British as ugly caricatures, and for leaving women, Muslims and lower castes out of its history: give gods, demons, villains, Muslims, Dalit and Adivasi characters the same drawing care, never use skin colour, features or dress as markers of evil, caste or religion, draw people across the real range of South Asian skin tones rather than one pale, uniform type, and do not present one Hindu reading as the whole of India's past.

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid): Samir, Majid, Kaslan Jiddan, Fudooli, Ammouna and the magazines' mastheads belong to their publishers (Dar al-Hilal, Abu Dhabi Media) and artists, and the Arabic Disney and Tintin pages to Disney and Hergé's estate: draw your own mascot, characters and masthead, never ask an image model for these characters or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page as a vintage issue. The tradition's artists also drew caricature, such as 'Ib Goha and Sambo' by Samir co-founder Haroon, about an Arab boy and his Black Nubian sidekick Sambo: give every character, Black, Nubian, foreign or villain, the same drawing care, and never make skin colour or features the joke. Draw everyday Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf children in the dress they actually wear (gallabiya, kandura and ghutra, shayla, school uniforms), not Orientalist shorthand (camels, harem veils, oil-sheikh caricatures, pseudo-Arabic squiggles), and do not copy Hergé's stereotyped Arabs of the invented Khemed, who are 'always the punchline' (Nadim Damluji). Leave religious pages to writers and readers of the faith, and have all Arabic lettering written or checked by a fluent reader, joined and running right to left.

The two styles

A colourful comic poster titled “The River Friends” follows four children in a rural village as they seek advice and bring their community together to build a stone check dam across a drying river. Black-bordered panels show the village, conversations with elders, collective construction, and the friends beside the restored river.

1967–present · South Asia Amar Chitra Katha Comics The Bombay comic-book series that from 1967 retold Hindu myth and epic, Buddhist and Jain tales, saints, folk legends, the jests of the court wits Birbal and Tenali Raman, and Indian history for children, in English and Indian languages, with well over 500 titles by the early 1990s. Each issue of about 32 pages tells one story, or a few short tales, in regular grids of ruled panels: brush-inked, idealised figures in flat colour, narration in tinted caption boxes, hand-lettered capitals, an iconography fixed from book to book, and a painted cover, often in the idiom of Indian calendar art.

A colourful Arabic comic poster shows children discovering litter on a beach, collecting it with gloves and bags, sorting waste into coloured bins, and celebrating together. In the bottom panel, four children sit facing the sea and a sunset, with sailboats and a coastal town in the distance.

1956–present · Middle East & North Africa Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid) Arabic children's comics weeklies, from Dar al-Hilal's Samir in Cairo (1956) to Abu Dhabi's Majid (1979), mixing translated Western strips with house characters by Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian and European artists. Pages read right to left: flat bright full-colour panels, rounded cartoon children in local dress, hand-lettered Arabic balloons and drawn sound effects, shared with quizzes, puzzles, contests, letters and lessons, under a boy mascot who names the magazine. The look is that of the colour weeklies of the 1950s to 1990s; Majid went monthly in 2020, redesigned by Studio Safar.

More combinations

With Amar Chitra Katha Comics

With Arab Children's Comic Magazines

Every style combination