Style combination · Pairs well

Angura Theatre Poster × Taishō Roman

Angura recycled Meiji and Taishō imagery as found material; cut a Taishō beauty into an angura collage for ironic retro nostalgia.

From the research on Angura Theatre Poster

Mix them and make something Angura Theatre Poster Taishō Roman

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Taishō Roman, their arrangement from Angura Theatre Poster, the finish from Taishō Roman. 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.

Angura Theatre Poster Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

Type from Taishō Roman: Hand-lettering
Rotated & vertical setting
Colour from Angura Theatre Poster: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Taishō Roman: Distortion & exaggeration
Stylised figuration
Composition from Angura Theatre Poster: Collage & layering
Radial & concentric
Surface from Taishō Roman: Flat

The type

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

Display · Taishō Roman

Reverie

Federant, standing in for Art Nouveau-style Latin display lettering

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

The colours

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

Angura Theatre Poster Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

#ffd400 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#e8352a accent · 18%
#b8333a accent · 14%
#3fa9f5 accent · 10%
#c9a548 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffd400;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #e8352a;
  --accent-2: #b8333a;
  --accent-3: #3fa9f5;
  --accent-4: #c9a548;
  --font-display: "Federant", 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.

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. 1910–1940 · East Asia Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration The lyrical illustration (jojōga) of late-Meiji to early-Shōwa Japan, led by Takehisa Yumeji: willowy, large-eyed women in kimono drawn with an Art Nouveau contour, set among camellias and kimono patterns and lettered by hand. Made for sheet-music covers, girls' magazines, postcards and paper goods, it is intimate and melancholic rather than ornamental, and its eyes and moods passed through Nakahara Jun'ichi into shōjo manga.