Style combination · Contrasts
West African Barbershop × Ghanaian Movie Poster
Same painters' media and cities but opposite temperament; set the calm, catalogue-like heads against the lurid, distorted drama of the movie posters.
Mix them and make something West African Barbershop Ghanaian Movie Poster
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.
West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs Ghanaian Movie Poster
- Type from West African Barbershop
- Colour from West African Barbershop
- Form from Ghanaian Movie Poster
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West African Barbershop avoids distortion & exaggeration: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from West African Barbershop
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Ghanaian Movie Poster avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Surface from Ghanaian Movie Poster
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · West African Barbershop
Ours
Bungee, standing in for Outlined, drop-shadowed block capitals by sign painters
Text · Ghanaian Movie Poster
Hand-painted posters commissioned by Ghana's mobile video clubs from about 1985, painted by apprenticed sign painters on stitched flour sacks to advertise VHS screenings of Hollywood, Hong Kong, Nigerian and Indian films. Often without having seen the film, artists invented gory, supernatural and hyper-muscular scenes around looming heads and hand-lettered titles, producing one of the most uninhibited poster vernaculars anywhere.
Archivo; Ghanaian Movie Poster used Hand-painted outlined block capitals and Sign-painter shaded and drop-shadowed letters
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from West African Barbershop, with a counter-accent from Ghanaian Movie Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs Ghanaian Movie Poster
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#f4efe6ground · 36% -
#151515ink · 14% -
#f2c230accent · 18% -
#1e6fd9accent · 14% -
#c8232caccent · 10% -
#5a3220accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4efe6;
--ink: #151515;
--accent-1: #f2c230;
--accent-2: #1e6fd9;
--accent-3: #c8232c;
--accent-4: #5a3220;
--font-display: "Bungee", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With West African Barbershop
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics Pairs well · Treat the hairstyle board as a humane pictogram chart: one consistent figure per cell, labelled, for comparison at a glance.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Use the sign writer's shaded capitals for the shop band and the barbershop grid of painted heads below it, as the boards themselves do.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · Both repeat one head in a grid with small variations; pair Warhol's serial portraits with painted, named hairstyles for a warmer, hand-made take on repetition.
- Lotería Card Imagery (Mexican Lotería) Contrasts · Both lay out named, numbered pictures in rows and columns, but a barbershop sign is one hand-painted menu of heads that differ only in their hairstyle, under the shop's boast, while a lotería tabla is a printed board of unrelated emblems, one of a set of boards that each hold a different selection from the same deck.
- Matatu & Nganya Art Pairs well · Another African street commission built on painted heads; pair the barbershop board's frontal, stylised faces with the matatu's airbrushed, foreshortened star portraits for a Nairobi street layout.
- South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi) Pairs well · Hair-salon boards were among Ijusi's sources; pair a painted grid of named hairstyles with a many-typeface layout and found photographs.
- Tingatinga Painting Pairs well · Both are hand-painted enamel on board for a street market; borrow the sign painter's outlined capitals to give Tingatinga figures a title or shop name.
With Ghanaian Movie Poster
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Share dream logic and monstrous hybrids; use Surrealist juxtaposition to frame Ghana-style painted figures in an editorial layout.
- Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster Pairs well · Combine Ghana's lurid invented scenes with Bollywood's glossy star portraits for a painted, maximalist film identity.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Minimalist film posters reduce a story to one symbol while Ghanaian posters cram in everything; reach for the latter when a brief needs maximal spectacle.
- Afrobeat Sleeve Art Pairs well · Another West African painted vernacular with bodies crowding the frame; borrow its looming heads for a sleeve's front and Afrobeat's strips for the back.
- Nollywood Video Jacket & Film Poster Contrasts · Its painted neighbour: Ghanaian video clubs had sign painters hand-paint posters for many of the same Nigerian films, alongside Hollywood, Hong Kong and Indian ones. Swap the cut-out photographs for brushwork on flour sacks to move from one to the other.
- Ghanaian Funeral Poster & Banner Contrasts · They share the walls of Ghanaian towns, but the movie poster is painted by hand on flour sacks with invented, lurid scenes, while the funeral poster is typeset on a computer around a real photograph; set one painted, exaggerated figure against a funeral poster's sober portrait for a deliberate clash of registers.
- Matatu & Nganya Art Contrasts · Both are commissioned African street art built on looming painted heads, but Ghana's posters are gestural sign-painter enamel on flour sacks that invent gore and muscle for a film, while the nganya's stars are smooth, airbrushed likenesses fitted to a glossy vehicle body.
- Kinshasa Popular Painting Contrasts · Same sign-painter roots, opposite use of words: Ghanaian posters letter only a film title to sell a lurid scene, while Kinshasa paintings fill the scene with commentary to be read.