Style combination · Pairs well

Arab Children's Comic Magazines × Ligne Claire

Samir took the Belgian Tintin weekly as its model; borrow the even contour and evenly lit, legible settings to tighten a looser cartoon page.

From the research on Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)

Mix them and make something Arab Children's Comic Magazines Ligne Claire

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Ligne Claire, their arrangement from Arab Children's Comic Magazines, the finish from Arab Children's Comic Magazines. 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.

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid) Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line)

Type from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Ligne Claire: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Ligne Claire: Stylised figuration
Naturalistic depiction
Composition from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from Arab Children's Comic Magazines: Flat

The type

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

Display · Arab Children's Comic Magazines

Wow

Rakkas, standing in for Hand-lettered Arabic balloon text, read right to left (in colloquial Egyptian Arabic in most of Samir's stories, in literary Arabic in Bisat al-Rih)

Text · Ligne Claire

The comic drawing style of Hergé's Tintin and the Brussels school, named 'klare lijn' by Joost Swarte in 1977. One even, unhatched contour closes every figure and object, and flat, bright colour fills it without shading. Caricatural characters stand in researched, realistically drawn streets, machines and landscapes, all evenly lit and equally legible. Revived from the late 1970s by Swarte, Chaland, Floc'h and Ted Benoit, it left the album page for posters, record sleeves, magazine covers, murals and advertising, often in a knowing 1950s-retro key.

Comic Neue; Ligne Claire used Bold hand-drawn capitals for titles and Heavy hand-drawn display capitals

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Ligne Claire, with a counter-accent from Arab Children's Comic Magazines. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid) Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line)

#fbf6e9 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#f0b73a accent · 18%
#d8352a accent · 14%
#3b6fb6 accent · 10%
#9cc3e0 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbf6e9;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #f0b73a;
  --accent-2: #d8352a;
  --accent-3: #3b6fb6;
  --accent-4: #9cc3e0;
  --font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
  --font-text: "Comic Neue", cursive;
}

Use it with care

Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid): Samir, Majid, Kaslan Jiddan, Fudooli, Ammouna and the magazines' mastheads belong to their publishers (Dar al-Hilal, Abu Dhabi Media) and artists, and the Arabic Disney and Tintin pages to Disney and Hergé's estate: draw your own mascot, characters and masthead, never ask an image model for these characters or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page as a vintage issue. The tradition's artists also drew caricature, such as 'Ib Goha and Sambo' by Samir co-founder Haroon, about an Arab boy and his Black Nubian sidekick Sambo: give every character, Black, Nubian, foreign or villain, the same drawing care, and never make skin colour or features the joke. Draw everyday Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf children in the dress they actually wear (gallabiya, kandura and ghutra, shayla, school uniforms), not Orientalist shorthand (camels, harem veils, oil-sheikh caricatures, pseudo-Arabic squiggles), and do not copy Hergé's stereotyped Arabs of the invented Khemed, who are 'always the punchline' (Nadim Damluji). Leave religious pages to writers and readers of the faith, and have all Arabic lettering written or checked by a fluent reader, joined and running right to left.

Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line): Tintin and his companions and Blake and Mortimer are copyrighted characters whose rights are actively enforced (Hergé's by Tintinimaginatio, called Moulinsart until 2022), and Swarte, Floc'h and Meulen are working artists: draw your own characters, settings and lettering in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for these artists or characters by name, and never present a generated picture as theirs. The style's clarity does not neutralise its early content: Tintin in the Congo caricatures Congolese people as childlike in a colonial frame, and The Shooting Star, serialised in the German-controlled Le Soir in 1941–42, made its villain an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish financier (renamed in 1954). Simplify every character with the same economy as the lead, and never use exaggerated lips, noses, skin colour or dress as ethnic markers.