Style combination · Pairs well

Arts × Solarpunk

Both prize the artisan over the factory; wrap a solarpunk scene in a Morris-style foliage border or woodcut initial for zines, seed packets and printed manifestos.

From the research on Solarpunk

Mix them and make something Arts Solarpunk

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Solarpunk, their arrangement from Arts, the finish from Arts. 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.

Arts & Crafts Movement Solarpunk

Type from Arts: Humanist & Garalde serif
Blackletter
Colour from Solarpunk: Analogous harmony
Earth & mineral
Form from Solarpunk: Biomorphic curves
Floral & vegetal
Composition from Arts: Framed panels
Classical text block
Surface from Arts: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · Arts

Rise

EB Garamond; Arts used Golden Type and Troy and Chaucer

Text · Solarpunk

Hopeful eco-futurist imagery born online. The word dates from a 2008 blog post; the look from an August 2014 Tumblr post by the artist Olivia Louise asking for renewable technology with 'an Art Nouveau veneer'. Sunlit painted vistas, or flat, textured cover illustrations thick with foliage, show cities grown over with gardens, stained-glass solar panels, airships, wind power and shared streets full of people, in natural greens and sky blues warmed by gold. It fills book and magazine covers, concept art and animation as the daylit, communal opposite of cyberpunk's neon night.

Newsreader; Solarpunk used Swash, Art Nouveau-flavoured upper- and lowercase display lettering, as in Solarpunk Magazine's orange masthead and Wide, flared capitals with sun-wheel O's on a translucent title panel over the painting, as on the Sunvault cover

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Solarpunk, with a counter-accent from Arts. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Arts & Crafts Movement Solarpunk

#f4ecd2 ground · 36%
#2b4a3a ink · 14%
#e8b445 accent · 18%
#a33224 accent · 14%
#b8652f accent · 10%
#2f9fae accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4ecd2;
  --ink: #2b4a3a;
  --accent-1: #e8b445;
  --accent-2: #a33224;
  --accent-3: #b8652f;
  --accent-4: #2f9fae;
  --font-display: "EB Garamond", serif;
  --font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}

Use it with care

Solarpunk: Draw original worlds rather than pastiches of Studio Ghibli films or of living illustrators such as Likhain, Fei Fei Ruan or Stephen Lillie, and do not prompt an image model with their names. Do not use the look to greenwash: Adam Flynn calls luxury condos with a green roof that price out existing communities 'fake Solarpunk urbanism', so show shared, affordable infrastructure and ordinary people. When a scene borrows architecture, dress or symbols from a specific culture (Afrofuturist, Indigenous or other), keep their meanings and credit their makers.

The two styles

An ornate botanical design surrounds a large blank cream oval, with curling green leaves and red, blue, and ochre flowers. Two blue-and-yellow birds face inward near the top, and a narrow leafy border has square floral decorations at all four corners.

1860–1920 · Western Europe, North America Arts & Crafts Movement A British-led reform movement that answered industrial shoddiness with honest handcraft, medieval models and the ideal of joy in labour. In graphic design it is embodied by William Morris's Kelmscott Press: dark Jenson-derived and gothic types, handmade paper, and wood-engraved borders and initials dense with stylised foliage, treating the book as one integrated, hand-made object.

An ornate illustrated poster reads “BRIGHTER TOGETHER” above a sunlit, plant-covered city with glasshouses, bridges, waterfalls, wind turbines and sailboats on a canal. In the foreground, a woman tends flowers beside a man, a child and a cat, with flowering vines framing the scene.

2014–present · Global / networked, North America, Latin America & Caribbean Solarpunk Hopeful eco-futurist imagery born online. The word dates from a 2008 blog post; the look from an August 2014 Tumblr post by the artist Olivia Louise asking for renewable technology with 'an Art Nouveau veneer'. Sunlit painted vistas, or flat, textured cover illustrations thick with foliage, show cities grown over with gardens, stained-glass solar panels, airships, wind power and shared streets full of people, in natural greens and sky blues warmed by gold. It fills book and magazine covers, concept art and animation as the daylit, communal opposite of cyberpunk's neon night.

More combinations

With Arts

All 16 combinations with Arts

With Solarpunk

All 10 combinations with Solarpunk

Every style combination