Style combination · Contrasts

Analog Horror Graphics × Demoscene Graphics

Both put bitmap type on black screens, but the demoscene shows a machine running flawlessly at its limit and analog horror shows one failing. Pick mastery or breakdown.

From the research on Analog Horror Graphics

Mix them and make something Analog Horror Graphics Demoscene Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Demoscene Graphics, their arrangement from Analog Horror Graphics, the finish from Analog Horror Graphics. 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.

Analog Horror Graphics Demoscene Graphics (Cracktros, Demos & Text-Mode Art)

Type from Demoscene Graphics: Bitmap & pixel
Ornamented display
Colour from Analog Horror Graphics: Flat fields
Dark ground
Form from Demoscene Graphics: Rules & bars
Optical pattern
Composition from Analog Horror Graphics: Sequential narrative
Full bleed
Surface from Analog Horror Graphics: Grain & noise
Glitch

Demoscene Graphics avoids glitch: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

The type

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

Display · Demoscene Graphics

Signal

VT323, standing in for The IBM PC code page 437 character set in the VGA 9×16 text-mode font, whose block, shade and box-drawing glyphs build ANSI art and the ASCII logos of NFO release files

Text · Demoscene Graphics

The graphics of the demoscene, a mainly European community of coders, graphicians and musicians that grew from the intros software crackers added to pirated Commodore 64 and Amiga games in the mid-1980s. On a black screen a hand-pixelled group logo in chrome, metal or stone shading hangs over raster (on the Amiga, "copper") bars, sine scrollers, starfields and real-time 3D cut to tracker music; still pictures push tiny palettes through dithering, and a text-mode branch from North American bulletin boards draws ANSI art from IBM PC characters.

VT323; Demoscene Graphics used Hand-pixelled group logos with chrome, metal or stone shading, bevels and highlights, drawn dot by dot in paint programs such as Deluxe Paint (Dan Silva, Electronic Arts, 1985) on the Amiga and Bitmap scroller fonts, from 8×8 character sets to large multicolour alphabets, bent into sine-wave and DYCP (different Y character position) scrollers

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Analog Horror Graphics, with a counter-accent from Demoscene Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Analog Horror Graphics Demoscene Graphics (Cracktros, Demos & Text-Mode Art)

#0b0b0b ground · 36%
#ececec ink · 14%
#bfbf00 accent · 18%
#ff7a1a accent · 14%
#bf0000 accent · 10%
#ff3fa4 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0b0b0b;
  --ink: #ececec;
  --accent-1: #bfbf00;
  --accent-2: #ff7a1a;
  --accent-3: #bf0000;
  --accent-4: #ff3fa4;
  --font-display: "VT323", monospace;
  --font-text: "VT323", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Analog Horror Graphics: Fake emergency alerts can be mistaken for real ones: in the United States 47 CFR § 11.45 bars transmitting EAS codes or the Attention Signal, or a recording or simulation of them, outside real emergencies and authorised tests, so keep real alert tones, codes and agency names out of anything that may be broadcast, and label a fictional warning as fiction. Keep strobing static and flashing alert screens to three flashes a second or fewer (WCAG 2.3.1). Invent the seal and flag on a fictional alert screen: real national emblems can be protected by law, and Indonesian law forbids showing the Garuda Pancasila damaged or altered from its prescribed shape, colours and proportions (first in Law 24/2009, since moved into the Criminal Code and narrowed by the Constitutional Court). The blue Peringatan Darurat Garuda is also a living pro-democracy protest symbol, not a horror prop. The genre corrupts other people's footage (The Beginner's Bible in The Mandela Catalogue), so use public-domain or licensed material. Gemini Home Entertainment's creatures grew out of 'classic internet creepypastas surrounding Skinwalkers or the Wendigo' (Kok, 2022). The skin-walker belongs to Navajo (Diné) tradition and is rarely discussed with outsiders, and Native critics such as Adrienne Keene have objected to non-Navajo writers using it; the wendigo comes from Algonquian folklore. Do not turn these or other Indigenous beliefs into monsters for a design.

Demoscene Graphics (Cracktros, Demos & Text-Mode Art): The demoscene is a living, non-commercial community whose practice is on the national inventories of intangible heritage of Finland (2020), Germany and Poland (2021), Switzerland and the Netherlands (2023), Sweden and France (2025) and Norway (2026), and its pictures are signed work: party rules throw out ripped entries, ban AI-generated or AI-inspired graphics and ask for working stages as proof of hand work. Never copy a group's logo or an artist's pixels, do not pass a generated chrome-logo-and-copper-bar pastiche off as scene work, and credit or commission scene graphicians when a project borrows the look; the crack-intro roots lie in software piracy, which the scene has long distanced itself from, so do not borrow real cracking-group names for new work or glamourise warez. Keep flashing raster and strobe effects to three flashes or fewer per second when the look moves into interfaces, broadcast or public screens.