Style combination · Pairs well
Art Nouveau × Taishō Roman
Its source of line: keep Art Nouveau's contour but drop the ornamental excess, leaving one figure and a few flowers for an intimate Taishō register.
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 Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration
- Type from Art Nouveau
- Colour from Taishō Roman
- Form from Art Nouveau
- Composition from Art Nouveau
- Surface from Taishō Roman
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Taishō Roman
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.
Shippori Mincho; Taishō Roman used Hand-drawn title lettering mixing kanji, kana and Latin and Brush-written kana for lyric poems
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Taishō Roman, with a counter-accent from Art Nouveau. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Art Nouveau Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration
-
#f1e8d5ground · 36% -
#3b4a6bink · 14% -
#b8333aaccent · 18% -
#c9a24baccent · 14% -
#3f7a75accent · 10% -
#d98b8faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f1e8d5;
--ink: #3b4a6b;
--accent-1: #b8333a;
--accent-2: #c9a24b;
--accent-3: #3f7a75;
--accent-4: #d98b8f;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}04
The two styles
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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 Taishō Roman
- Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints Pairs well · Yumeji's beauties continue the bijin-ga print; pair a woodblock-printed pattern ground with a lyrical modern figure.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Contrasts · Postwar modernism replaced this sentimental figure with emblems and empty fields; set one against the other to calibrate warmth against austerity.
- Kawaii Design Pairs well · Nakahara Jun'ichi's large-eyed girls link the two; give kawaii characters Taishō's muted palette and wistful mood for an older, nostalgic audience.
- Shōjo Manga (Japanese Girls' Comics) Pairs well · Its root: Takahashi Macoto took Nakahara Jun'ichi's large, doll-like eyes with highlights and long lashes and added dots, stars and colour to the iris. Borrow jojōga's single wistful figure, muted cream paper and hand lettering for a cover or title page with a period mood.
- Mavo Contrasts · The same Taishō Tokyo in two moods: pastel lyrical illustration of modern girls against Mavo's black linocuts, newsprint and price tags.
- Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics) Pairs well · Jojōga's large, highlighted, long-lashed eyes passed from Nakahara Jun'ichi to Takahashi Macoto, who added stars and dots to the iris, and so into shōjo manga; add Taishō lyrical faces, kimono patterns and soft lines to a manga page for a period romance.
- Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing) Pairs well · Feng Zikai found Takehisa Yumeji's lyrical drawings in Tokyo; Yumeji's soft line suits the quiet, literary register of these covers.
- Angura Theatre Poster Pairs well · Angura recycled Meiji and Taishō imagery as found material; cut a Taishō beauty into an angura collage for ironic retro nostalgia.