Stylogeny combining Angura Theatre Poster × Garo and Heta-uma

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Style combination · Pairs well

Angura Theatre Poster × Garo and Heta-uma

Both are 1960s-70s Tokyo underground print; set crude Garo-style figures against angura's crowded silkscreen colour.

From the research on Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration)

Mix them and make something Angura Theatre Poster Garo and Heta-uma

NoiseAngura Theatre Poster × Garo and Heta-uma
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Garo and Heta-uma, their arrangement from Angura Theatre Poster, the finish from Garo and Heta-uma. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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.

Angura Theatre Poster Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration)

Type from Garo and Heta-uma
Colour from Angura Theatre Poster
Form from Garo and Heta-uma
Composition from Angura Theatre Poster
Surface from Garo and Heta-uma

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The type

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

Display · Garo and Heta-uma

Noise

Londrina Solid; Garo and Heta-uma used Uneven hand-drawn katakana and hiragana lettering inside the drawing and Hand-lettered Garo titles and credits in brush and pen

Text · Angura Theatre Poster

The posters of Japan's underground (angura) theatre from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, made for troupes such as Kara Jūrō's Jōkyō Gekijō and Terayama Shūji's Tenjō Sajiki. Tadanori Yokoo, Akira Uno, Kiyoshi Awazu and others crammed silkscreen sheets with Meiji and Shōwa photographs, rising-sun rays, Mount Fuji, ukiyo-e waves and comic-strip figures in flat, often fluorescent colour, mocking prewar kitsch and the restraint of Japanese corporate modernism at once.

Shippori Mincho; Angura Theatre Poster used Hand-drawn and brush-written Japanese titles set vertically and Retro Meiji–Shōwa display lettering lifted from found print

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The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Angura Theatre Poster, with a counter-accent from Garo and Heta-uma. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Angura Theatre Poster Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration)

  • #ffd400 ground · 36%
  • #1a1a1a ink · 14%
  • #e8352a accent · 18%
  • #3fa9f5 accent · 14%
  • #8a8478 accent · 10%
  • #ff4f9a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffd400;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #e8352a;
  --accent-2: #3fa9f5;
  --accent-3: #8a8478;
  --accent-4: #ff4f9a;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Angura Theatre Poster: Rising-sun rays quote the ensign of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, which many people in Korea, China and across Asia read as a symbol of wartime aggression; Yokoo's ironic use belonged to a 1960s Japanese argument with its own past and does not travel safely as a decorative sunburst. The ero-guro imagery includes sexualised and violent bodies, and the posters remain in copyright, so quote or license them with context rather than tracing them.

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The two styles

A densely layered, brightly coloured collage centres a woman's face beneath a large moon, surrounded by stars, planets, birds, flowers, waterfalls and Japanese-style buildings. A snow-capped mountain, two koi fish, circular animal and flower portraits, and a black-and-white city with a pink river fill the lower half. 1965–1985 · East Asia Angura Theatre Poster The posters of Japan's underground (angura) theatre from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, made for troupes such as Kara Jūrō's Jōkyō Gekijō and Terayama Shūji's Tenjō Sajiki. Tadanori Yokoo, Akira Uno, Kiyoshi Awazu and others crammed silkscreen sheets with Meiji and Shōwa photographs, rising-sun rays, Mount Fuji, ukiyo-e waves and comic-strip figures in flat, often fluorescent colour, mocking prewar kitsch and the restraint of Japanese corporate modernism at once. A long-haired girl in a red dress sits barefoot on a weathered wall beside a large gray cat and small fanciful creatures, with rooftops and a perched black bird behind them. A red moon with a face hangs above, alongside the hand-drawn title “Moon Friends.” 1970–1989 · East Asia Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration) The deliberately crude, naive-looking drawing of Japan's alternative manga and illustration, centred on the magazine Garo (1964-2002) from the 1970s. Wobbly pen lines, flat or scratchy fills and unpolished hand lettering were chosen on purpose, as 'bad but good' (heta-uma), against the polished look of commercial story manga. Garo also ran realist gekiga, which is outside this idiom. Modern viewers regard a rabbit painting attributed to Tokugawa Iemitsu as an early precursor. The idiom reached illustration and marketing in the 1970s and 1980s.

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More combinations

With Angura Theatre Poster

With Garo and Heta-uma

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