Style combination · Contrasts
Art Deco × Art Nouveau
Deco straightened Nouveau's whiplash; place a rigid sunburst beside one sinuous curve to show the evolution.
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.
Art Deco Art Nouveau
- Type from Art Nouveau
- Colour from Art Deco
- Form from Art Nouveau
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Art Deco avoids whiplash line: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Art Deco
- Surface from Art Deco
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Art Deco
The glamorous modern style named after the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which disciplined ornament into geometry: sunbursts, chevrons, stepped forms and sleek stylised figures rendered in lacquer-smooth colour with metallic accents. In Cassandre's and Colin's posters, fashion magazines, cinemas and luxury packaging it spoke of speed, travel, jazz and wealth.
Jost; Art Deco used Broadway and Bifur
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Art Deco, with a counter-accent from Art Nouveau. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Art Deco Art Nouveau
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#111111ground · 36% -
#f1e6cfink · 14% -
#c9a227accent · 18% -
#8c1c26accent · 14% -
#3f7a75accent · 10% -
#0f5c55accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #111111;
--ink: #f1e6cf;
--accent-1: #c9a227;
--accent-2: #8c1c26;
--accent-3: #3f7a75;
--accent-4: #0f5c55;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Art Deco
- Googie & Atomic Age Pairs well · Googie's atomic starbursts extend Deco's celestial ornament; mix them for retro hospitality and signage.
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Puncture Deco polish with a single torn, photocopied edge when luxury needs irony.
- Streamline Moderne Pairs well · Fold Streamline speed lines and rounded corners into a Deco layout to move from stepped geometry toward aerodynamic sweep.
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) Contrasts · A source as well as a foil: Leupin studied at the École Paul Colin in Paris in 1935-36 and took strong impressions from Colin and from Colin's rival Cassandre. Both make a product a heroic icon, but Deco stylises it into a geometric silhouette with airbrushed gradation and geometric capitals, while Basel paints the real object, its material and its label, as a still life.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Pairs well · Both drew the 1920s skyline; pair Deco's setback towers and block display letters with Stridentist black-and-white relief for a skyscraper poster with a rougher, revolutionary edge.
- Vienna Secession Pairs well · Carry the Secession's squares, chequers and gold into Deco's stepped geometry for a luxurious but disciplined look.
- Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT) Contrasts · Katzourakis studied poster design under Paul Colin in Paris; set a Deco travel poster's heroic, airbrushed destination beside this flat, cut-out sign to show how the tourist poster was stripped down after the war.
- Cubist Pictorial Space Pairs well · Fracture a Deco poster subject into crisp Cubist planes, as Cassandre did, to add depth and movement without losing polish.
With Art Nouveau
- Fileteado Porteño Pairs well · Fileteado's acanthus scrolls share the whiplash; combine them for ornate, hand-made lettering frames.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Ornamental curves against an orthogonal grid make a strong deliberate tension; let one botanical flourish break a cold grid.
- Psychedelic Poster Pairs well · San Francisco poster artists lifted Mucha's figures and whiplash wholesale; push the curves into saturated, vibrating colour for a 1960s-flavoured revival.
- Russian Constructivism Contrasts · Organic sensuality versus machine-age diagonals: use the opposition to stage nature against industry.
- Vienna Secession Contrasts · Set French whiplash against the Viennese square to show the turn from organic to geometric ornament within one decorative idiom.
- Skønvirke (Danish Art Nouveau, Bindesbøll) Contrasts · Shares the hand-lettering and abundance but swaps the whiplash line and the female figure for blunt abstract masses; set side by side they show the heavy Danish variant.
- Expressionist Woodcut Graphics Contrasts · The parent's smooth whiplash and floral harmony is exactly what the gouge splinters; use one against the other to stage order breaking down.
- Beggarstaffs Poster (Nicholson & Pryde) Contrasts · Its curving floral line is the opposite of cut masses; set side by side to show how much a poster can drop.