Style combination · Contrasts
Art Nouveau × Beggarstaffs Poster
Its curving floral line is the opposite of cut masses; set side by side to show how much a poster can drop.
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 Nouveau Beggarstaffs Poster (Nicholson & Pryde)
- Type from Art Nouveau
- Colour from Beggarstaffs Poster
- Form from Art Nouveau
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Beggarstaffs Poster avoids whiplash line and biomorphic curves: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Beggarstaffs Poster
- Surface from Beggarstaffs Poster
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Beggarstaffs Poster
Posters designed by William Nicholson and James Pryde under the pseudonym J. & W. Beggarstaff: shapes cut from paper and shifted about a board until the silhouette worked, then executed by stencil (Hamlet was stencilled on brown wrapping paper, with details added by hand) in a few flat colours. Figures are left partly incomplete for the viewer to finish. Unlike the later Plakatstil, a commercial system of silhouette and plain lettering, this was a cut-paper collage method made by a studio of two; few designs were printed and they were too avant-garde for the advertisers of the day.
Bodoni Moda; Beggarstaffs Poster used Hand-drawn poster lettering and Plain Victorian sans-serif capitals
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Beggarstaffs Poster, with a counter-accent from Art Nouveau. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Art Nouveau Beggarstaffs Poster (Nicholson & Pryde)
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#f1e8d4ground · 36% -
#1c1b19ink · 14% -
#e8b923accent · 18% -
#c9a24baccent · 14% -
#7a4a2baccent · 10% -
#3f7a75accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f1e8d4;
--ink: #1c1b19;
--accent-1: #e8b923;
--accent-2: #c9a24b;
--accent-3: #7a4a2b;
--accent-4: #3f7a75;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
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.
- Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich) Contrasts · The parent: Heine took over the Jugendstil idiom, but where Art Nouveau spends the whiplash line on flowers and idealised women, Simplicissimus spends it on a grotesque type and a caption. Choose it when the curve should mock rather than adorn.