Style combination · Contrasts

Analog Horror Graphics × Synthwave

Both finish 1980s screens with VHS tracking noise, scanlines and grain, but synthwave treats the decade with affection, in neon grids, chrome type and sunsets, while analog horror makes it a flat, official screen that is failing. Keep neon and chrome out, and let the noise mean something is wrong.

From the research on Analog Horror Graphics

Mix them and make something Analog Horror Graphics Synthwave

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Synthwave, their arrangement from Synthwave, 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 Synthwave / Outrun

Type from Analog Horror Graphics: All caps
Monospace
Colour from Analog Horror Graphics: Flat fields
Dark ground
Form from Synthwave: Cosmic & celestial
Geometric primitives
Composition from Synthwave: Central symmetry
Illusion of depth
Surface from Analog Horror Graphics: Grain & noise
Glitch

The type

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

Display · Analog Horror Graphics

Souvenir

Big Shoulders, standing in for 'Grainy VCR text onscreen' (Kok, 2022): the blocky, fixed-width lettering of tape-deck on-screen displays and station character generators, sometimes scrolling across the picture; The Mandela Catalogue's captions are often lowercase ('suspect identified', 'answers lie beneath'), the exception to the capitals rule

Text · Synthwave

The retro-futurist look of synthwave music: a 1980s revival that grew from mid-2000s French electro and online synth scenes, took its other name from Sega's arcade racer Out Run (1986) and reached the mainstream with Drive (2011). Its register runs from the brooding night drives of Kavinsky and Hotline Miami to the affectionate parody of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Kung Fury. The visuals, settled around 2010–2013, recall the era's film posters, arcades and VHS: a neon grid running to a banded setting sun, chrome logotypes and hot-pink script, palms and sports cars at night, tape noise.

VT323; Synthwave used Mistral (Roger Excoffon, Fonderie Olive, 1953), the brush script set in hot pink for the Drive poster title and Custom chrome-bevelled, airbrushed logotypes with star glints, after 1980s film-poster and arcade titles

The colours

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

Analog Horror Graphics Synthwave / Outrun

#0b0b0b ground · 36%
#ececec ink · 14%
#bfbf00 accent · 18%
#05d9e8 accent · 14%
#bf0000 accent · 10%
#ff9f1c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0b0b0b;
  --ink: #ececec;
  --accent-1: #bfbf00;
  --accent-2: #05d9e8;
  --accent-3: #bf0000;
  --accent-4: #ff9f1c;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --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.

Synthwave / Outrun: Since about 2015 far-right 'fashwave' has appropriated synthwave, setting fascist symbols, classical statues and slogans on neon grids and swapping the classic neon sun for the Nazi Black Sun; keep the sun a plain banded disc, avoid sunwheel, eagle and bust-plus-slogan layouts, and check where borrowed fan art and music come from.