Style combination · Pairs well

American Traditional Tattoo Flash × Hand-Painted Signage

Both are sign-painter crafts of the same shopfront streets; pair flash emblems with brushed shop lettering for a whole storefront.

From the research on American Traditional Tattoo Flash

Mix them and make something American Traditional Tattoo Flash Hand-Painted Signage

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from American Traditional Tattoo Flash, their arrangement from American Traditional Tattoo Flash, the finish from Hand-Painted Signage. 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.

American Traditional Tattoo Flash Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering

Type from Hand-Painted Signage: Hand-lettering
Script
Colour from American Traditional Tattoo Flash: Flat fields
Limited spot colours
Form from American Traditional Tattoo Flash: Stylised figuration
Emblems & badges
Composition from American Traditional Tattoo Flash: Isolated object
Modular grid

Hand-Painted Signage avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other.
Surface from Hand-Painted Signage: Hard offset shadow
Painterly brushwork

The type

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

Display · Hand-Painted Signage

Together

Yellowtail, standing in for Brush script

Text · American Traditional Tattoo Flash

The stock designs of twentieth-century American tattoo shops: eagles, anchors, swallows, roses, hearts, daggers, panthers, skulls, ships, pin-ups and nautical stars, each drawn as an isolated emblem with a bold black outline, black shading and a few saturated flat colours (mainly red, yellow and green) chosen to stay legible on skin for a lifetime. Painted or printed on sheets and hung on shop walls, the designs carry vows, luck and service memories, and the look now travels far beyond the tattoo shop.

Libre Caslon Text; American Traditional Tattoo Flash used Script names and mottoes lettered in ribbon banners and Shaded and drop-shadowed block capitals in the sign writer's manner

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from American Traditional Tattoo Flash, with a counter-accent from Hand-Painted Signage. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

American Traditional Tattoo Flash Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering

#f1e4c8 ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#f2c12e accent · 18%
#c99a2e accent · 14%
#c8102e accent · 10%
#1f7a3a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e4c8;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #f2c12e;
  --accent-2: #c99a2e;
  --accent-3: #c8102e;
  --accent-4: #1f7a3a;
  --font-display: "Yellowtail", cursive;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}

Use it with care

American Traditional Tattoo Flash: Tattoo flash is the working craft of a living community of tattooers, who still trade, copy and repaint the old sheets by their own customs, and Sailor Jerry Ltd holds the commercial rights to Collins's letters, art and flash: draw new designs in the idiom rather than lifting a named artist's flash for branding or merchandise. Period sheets also include caricatures of other peoples, exoticised hula girls and geishas, and wartime jingoism; leave those out when quoting the style.