Style combination · Pairs well
Art Nouveau × Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
Druillet drew the huge structures behind Lone Sloane partly from Art Nouveau and Gothic cathedrals; borrow Art Nouveau's whiplash frames and arched borders to turn a science-fiction splash page or cover into a baroque altarpiece.
Mix them and make something Art Nouveau Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
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 Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)
- Type from Art Nouveau
- Colour from Art Nouveau
- Form from Art Nouveau
- Composition from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Surface from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
The adult science-fiction comics of Métal hurlant, the Paris magazine founded in 1974 by Mœbius, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Bernard Farkas. Mœbius's fine pen line and luminous colour set tiny figures in vast, silent deserts; Druillet exploded the page into baroque architecture and painterly double spreads. Sometimes wholly wordless, as in Arzach, and often dreamlike and erotic, it was carried abroad by Heavy Metal from 1977 and shaped film design from Alien to Blade Runner.
Archivo; Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics used Pen-lettered balloon capitals and Monumental drawn title lettering
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Art Nouveau, with a counter-accent from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Art Nouveau Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)
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#efe2c4ground · 36% -
#4b3b2aink · 14% -
#c9a24baccent · 18% -
#a3243faccent · 14% -
#3f7a75accent · 10% -
#e7a487accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe2c4;
--ink: #4b3b2a;
--accent-1: #c9a24b;
--accent-2: #a3243f;
--accent-3: #3f7a75;
--accent-4: #e7a487;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés): The stories, characters and drawings of Mœbius, Druillet, Bilal and the other contributors remain in copyright with their authors, estates and publishers: build your own worlds, creatures and title lettering in the shared idiom, do not ask an image model to imitate a named artist, and never present a generated picture as a page from the magazine. The magazine's adult register also ran to sexualised depictions of women; keep that choice deliberate and give women the same agency and drawing care as the heroes.
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.
- 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.
With Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Both grew from Franco-Belgian albums, and the magazine also printed clear-line artists such as Yves Chaland and Serge Clerc; ligne claire closes every form with one even, unhatched contour and flat colour in tidy panels, while Métal hurlant hatches and stipples its detail, modulates its colour and breaks the page into tableaux.
- Synthwave / Outrun Contrasts · Both picture the future as a 1970s and 1980s fantasy, but synthwave uses neon gradients, chrome and a perspective grid on black; switch to Métal hurlant for hand-drawn, pale desert light and alien organic forms.
- Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics) Contrasts · Hayao Miyazaki said he directed Nausicaä under Mœbius's influence; manga stays black and white with screentone, speed lines and fast cinematic cutting, while Métal hurlant slows down into colour tableaux and, in Arzach, tells whole stories without a word.
- Solarpunk Contrasts · Both paint pale, luminous futures full of biomorphic forms, and solarpunk counts Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind among its models, a film Miyazaki said he directed under Mœbius's influence; solarpunk is utopian, verdant and floral, while Métal hurlant sets lone figures in empty alien deserts and colossal architecture, tells adult stories with sex and violence, and breaks comic pages into tableaux.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Mœbius's silent deserts and metamorphosing creatures share Surrealism's dream logic and long empty perspectives; add its uncanny juxtapositions to a science-fiction landscape, but keep the comic's sequence of drawn panels.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Contrasts · The American newsstand comic tells superhero stories in ruled panel grids with flat four-colour dot tints on newsprint; Métal hurlant, and Heavy Metal as a glossy full-colour magazine, told adult science fiction with sex and violence, painterly colour and pages exploded into single visions.
- L'Association and French Alternative Comics Contrasts · Luminous colour, vast science-fiction vistas and painterly spreads against small black-and-white books about dreams, illness and family: the two poles of adult French comics.
- Underground Comix Contrasts · Adult comics of the 1970s in two opposite registers: painted, luminous science-fiction vistas against cheap, crowded black-and-white satire.