Style combination · Pairs well
Angura Theatre Poster × Push Pin Style
Yokoo started from Push Pin's illustrated eclecticism; pair Push Pin's period-pastiche lettering with angura's crowded Japanese ephemera.
Mix them and make something Angura Theatre Poster Push Pin Style
01
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 Push Pin Style
- Type from Push Pin Style
- Colour from Angura Theatre Poster
- Form from Push Pin Style
- Composition from Angura Theatre Poster
- Surface from Angura Theatre Poster
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
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
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Angura Theatre Poster, with a counter-accent from Push Pin Style. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Angura Theatre Poster Push Pin Style
-
#ffd400ground · 36% -
#1a1a1aink · 14% -
#e8352aaccent · 18% -
#f2b632accent · 14% -
#3fa9f5accent · 10% -
#ff4f9aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ffd400;
--ink: #1a1a1a;
--accent-1: #e8352a;
--accent-2: #f2b632;
--accent-3: #3fa9f5;
--accent-4: #ff4f9a;
--font-display: "Righteous", sans-serif;
--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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Angura Theatre Poster
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Contrasts · Angura rebelled against the Nippon Design Center generation's restraint; set an emblem-and-void poster beside a packed angura sheet to tune between order and overload.
- Psychedelic Poster Pairs well · Yokoo's late-1960s posters met San Francisco psychedelia halfway; combine fluorescent colour with Japanese found imagery rather than Art Nouveau curls.
- Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration Pairs well · Angura recycled Meiji and Taishō imagery as found material; cut a Taishō beauty into an angura collage for ironic retro nostalgia.
- La Movida Madrileña Graphics Contrasts · Both cram comic figures and their own country's imagery into flat, saturated colour with irony; Japan's angura posters were silkscreened for underground theatre from the mid-1960s, packed edge to edge with Meiji and Shōwa photographs, rising-sun rays and Mount Fuji around a central axis, while the Movida came after Franco's death and drew comics, hand lettering and cut-out photographs of its own people for magazines, bands and films.
- Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration) Pairs well · Both are 1960s-70s Tokyo underground print; set crude Garo-style figures against angura's crowded silkscreen colour.
- Superflat Contrasts · Both quote ukiyo-e and Pop from Japan, but angura crams photographs and fluorescent silkscreen into a rebellious collage while Superflat draws everything smooth and flat; set one flat Superflat character against an angura photomontage for a clash of eras.
- Tropicália Graphic Design Contrasts · The atlas's nearest genome and an exact contemporary: both mock national kitsch with photomontage, sun rays and crowded flat colour, but angura posters screenprint nostalgic Meiji and Shōwa photographs in fluorescent ink, while Tropicália offset-prints a photograph of the singer amid tropical flora and the flag's green and yellow.
- Mavo Pairs well · Two Tokyo undergrounds forty years apart: put Mavo's black-and-white newsprint collage and boxed text under Angura's flood of screenprinted colour for an anti-establishment poster with a longer memory.
With Push Pin Style
- Psychedelic Poster Pairs well · Both revive Art Nouveau lettering; add Push Pin's clean contour and wit to tame psychedelic excess into readable posters.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Push Pin defined itself against Helvetica neutrality; pit a bespoke illustrated letterform against a Swiss grid to dramatise personality versus system.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Generic, faceless corporate figures are the opposite of Push Pin's authored characters; use Push Pin to restore a distinct illustrative voice.
- Belle Époque Lithographic Poster Pairs well · Borrow Chéret's dancing figures alongside Push Pin's revived display faces for exuberant entertainment graphics.
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Pairs well · Push Pin revives old styles through drawn figures and Lubalin through the letters themselves; pair a Push Pin illustration with a swash, tightly kerned Lubalin headline for full 1970s New York warmth.
- UPA & Cartoon Modern Contrasts · Its New York contemporary shared UPA's comic, distorted figures and irony but went the opposite way on ornament: Push Pin piled on revived Victorian and Art Nouveau lettering, borders and ornament, while UPA stripped the picture to a figure, a line and a flat field.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Push Pin also draws in outline and flat colour, but mixes revived Victorian and Art Nouveau display faces, ornament and distortion; switch to ligne claire for one disciplined line, no ornament and evenly legible scenes.
- Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism Contrasts · Same city and years, opposite method: Push Pin draws figures and revives Victorian display letters, while Blue Note crops a photograph and sets one grotesque huge.