Style combination · Contrasts

Analog Horror Graphics × Weirdcore

Both turn nostalgia into unease and share The Backrooms, but weirdcore is a still snapshot of an empty place with one small lowercase caption, while analog horror is a sequence of broadcast or tape fragments in an official voice and plain capitals. Choose the found image or the fake transmission.

From the research on Analog Horror Graphics

Mix them and make something Analog Horror Graphics Weirdcore

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Weirdcore, their arrangement from Weirdcore, 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 Weirdcore & Dreamcore

Type from Analog Horror Graphics: All caps
Monospace
Colour from Analog Horror Graphics: Flat fields
Dark ground
Form from Weirdcore: Distortion & exaggeration
Naturalistic depiction
Composition from Weirdcore: Full bleed
Isolated object
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

Memory

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 · Weirdcore

An internet aesthetic popularised on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube in the early 2020s, with dreamcore as its softer, pastel, cloud-filled sister. Found or low-quality snapshots of empty, half-familiar places (playgrounds, classrooms, malls, corridors) are crudely edited: disembodied eyes in clouds or darkness, faceless figures in doorways, and short captions such as 'nothing is real' in red or inside black voids. The aim is anemoia, a nostalgia for places one never knew, turned into unease and the feeling of being watched.

Instrument Sans; Weirdcore used Short captions in out-of-place red text ('are you lost?', 'nothing is real'), typed in whatever plain default face the editing app offers and dropped onto the photograph and White text inside black rectangular voids pasted over the picture, the void heightening the message

The colours

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

Analog Horror Graphics Weirdcore & Dreamcore

#0b0b0b ground · 36%
#ececec ink · 14%
#bfbf00 accent · 18%
#ff0000 accent · 14%
#bf0000 accent · 10%
#cfc07a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0b0b0b;
  --ink: #ececec;
  --accent-1: #bfbf00;
  --accent-2: #ff0000;
  --accent-3: #bf0000;
  --accent-4: #cfc07a;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Instrument Sans", sans-serif;
}

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.

Weirdcore & Dreamcore: Weirdcore's found snapshots are other people's photographs, often of real homes, schools and playgrounds (the Backrooms photo was a real shop interior in Wisconsin, identified only in 2024): shoot or license your own places, and leave identifiable children and private interiors out. Its makers describe it as built to unsettle, from 'existentialism and derealization' (Nylon, 2021) to an 'aesthetic that can cause a panic attack' (a @unttochable video quoted by i-D, 2021), so take care before aiming it at children or using it near mental-health subjects, and keep video cuts to three or fewer flashes a second (WCAG 2.3.1).