Style combination · Contrasts

Fante Asafo Flags × European Heraldry

Asafo flag-makers took the canton from European flags, the griffin from English imagery and many-headed dragons probably inspired by the mythical creatures of heraldry, but a coat of arms is a symmetrical, rule-bound mark of a bearer, while an asafo flag is an asymmetrical picture of a boast or taunt; borrow heraldry's flat colours and borders, not its symmetry.

From the research on Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)

Mix them and make something Fante Asafo Flags European Heraldry

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from European Heraldry, their arrangement from European Heraldry, the finish from European Heraldry. 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.

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa) European Heraldry

Type from Fante Asafo Flags
Colour from Fante Asafo Flags: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from European Heraldry: Stylised figuration
Emblems & badges
Composition from European Heraldry: Central symmetry
Isolated object
Surface from European Heraldry: Flat

The type

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

Display · Fante Asafo Flags

Civic

Londrina Solid; Fante Asafo Flags used Embroidered block capitals and numerals naming the company and Company numbers such as 'Nº1' and 'Nº2' in a contrasting cloth or thread, set in the field or along an arm of a large cross that divides the field ('NºI' in red on the bottom arm of a wide golden-yellow cross, Flags of the World 'Crocodiles and moon' flag)

Text · European Heraldry

The hereditary identifying devices of medieval Europe's knights and seals, codified into a rule-bound grammar still used by states, cities, churches, universities and families. A coat of arms is defined by its written blazon, not by a drawing: a few flat tinctures (two metals, five colours and the furs) that keep metal off metal and colour off colour, a shield divided by bold ordinaries, and stylised charges in fixed poses, redrawn by every age in its own idiom and combined by impalement and quartering.

Libre Caslon Text; European Heraldry used Gothic book and cursive hands naming the bearer above or beside each shield in medieval rolls of arms and armorials, as 'die coninc van denmarke' beside the Danish flag in the Gelre Armorial and Mottoes lettered on a scroll beneath the shield

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Fante Asafo Flags, with a counter-accent from European Heraldry. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa) European Heraldry

#f0e9d8 ground · 36%
#1b1b1b ink · 14%
#f2b31b accent · 18%
#c62a2f accent · 14%
#1e3a8a accent · 10%
#3a9a9a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e9d8;
  --ink: #1b1b1b;
  --accent-1: #f2b31b;
  --accent-2: #c62a2f;
  --accent-3: #1e3a8a;
  --accent-4: #3a9a9a;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}

Use it with care

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa): Asafo companies are living institutions of Fante towns: each flag belongs to its company, is commissioned when a new captain takes office, is danced at festivals and members' funerals and hung at the company shrine, and its image is often a taunt aimed at a particular rival company. Do not copy a company's flag or emblem for branding, learn what a motif says as a proverb before using it, since a scene can boast or insult, and do not pass off a new flag sewn with a Union Jack as a colonial-era piece: workshops have made flags for collectors and tourists in record numbers since the mid-1990s, including new flags made to look pre-independence. Company imagery has carried political stakes: under colonial rule the British administration imposed strict regulations on asafo companies and their arts. Commission and credit Fante flag-makers' workshops rather than printing imitations.

European Heraldry: A coat of arms belongs to a particular bearer, lineage or (in Polish heraldry) clan, not to everyone with a surname: in Scotland it can belong to only one person at a time and the Court of the Lord Lyon can fine those who usurp arms and have the offending items removed or destroyed, state arms are protected against unauthorised registration and use as trademarks under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention, and many European cities and universities protect their arms as trademarks. Design new arms by the rules of the tradition rather than copying a real family's, city's or state's arms for decoration or branding, and do not present invented arms as a family's historic coat of arms. Crusader and Templar shields and knights with crosses on their chests or shields have also become far-right insignia (Charlottesville 2017, the US Capitol 2021), and neo-Nazis use an eagle loosely based on German coats of arms, though not every eagle derives from it; check how a cross, an eagle or a crusading knight will read before using it, and avoid pairing them with militant or ethnic-nationalist themes.