Stylogeny combining West African Barbershop × Hand-Painted Signage

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Style combination · Pairs well

West African Barbershop × Hand-Painted Signage

West African barbershop boards are the sign writer's catalogue genre; pair a painted name panel with a grid of numbered hairstyle portraits for a shop menu that reads from the street.

From the research on Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering

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.

From the research on West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs

Mix them and make something West African Barbershop Hand-Painted Signage

OursOursWest African × Hand-Painted Signage
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from West African Barbershop, their arrangement from West African Barbershop, the finish from Hand-Painted Signage. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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 Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering

Type from Hand-Painted Signage
Colour from West African Barbershop
Form from West African Barbershop
Composition from West African Barbershop

Hand-Painted Signage avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other.

Surface from Hand-Painted Signage

02

The type

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

Display · Hand-Painted Signage

Ours

Yellowtail, standing in for Brush script

Text · West African Barbershop

Hand-painted boards advertising barbershops and braiding salons across West and Central Africa, made by self-taught, often anonymous sign painters since the mid-20th century. Unlike lettering-led shop fascias they work as a picture menu: rows of naive, frontal heads, each modelling one named hairstyle, are laid out like a specimen chart under the shop name and boasts such as 'Extra O' (extraordinary).

Oswald; West African Barbershop used Outlined, drop-shadowed block capitals by sign painters and Brush-painted style names and numbers as captions

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from West African Barbershop, with a counter-accent from Hand-Painted Signage. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering

  • #f4efe6 ground · 36%
  • #151515 ink · 14%
  • #f2c230 accent · 18%
  • #c99a2e accent · 14%
  • #c8232c accent · 10%
  • #2f7fc1 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4efe6;
  --ink: #151515;
  --accent-1: #f2c230;
  --accent-2: #c99a2e;
  --accent-3: #c8232c;
  --accent-4: #2f7fc1;
  --font-display: "Yellowtail", cursive;
  --font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

A hand-painted-style sign headed “CROWN STYLE” displays eight numbered portraits of Black women with different braided, twisted, waved and updo hairstyles. Blue grid lines and a decorative border with yellow comb-and-crown motifs, white stars, dots and red-and-yellow ribbons surround the portraits. 1950–present · Sub-Saharan Africa West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs Hand-painted boards advertising barbershops and braiding salons across West and Central Africa, made by self-taught, often anonymous sign painters since the mid-20th century. Unlike lettering-led shop fascias they work as a picture menu: rows of naive, frontal heads, each modelling one named hairstyle, are laid out like a specimen chart under the shop name and boasts such as 'Extra O' (extraordinary). An ornate rectangular sign reads “RIVER MARKET” in large cream-and-gold capital letters on a dark green background, with red shadows on the top word and blue shadows below. Gold borders and scrolling flourishes surround the lettering, with red decorative motifs in the black corners and visible painted texture throughout. 1800–present · Global / networked Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Letters painted by trained sign writers on fascias, windows, walls, vehicles and showcards, from Victorian gold leaf on glass to Mexican rótulos, Indian bazaar boards and Ghanaian barbershop signs. Brush-built letters with shading, drop shadows and outlines are fitted to the panel and mixed in a few styles for hierarchy, valuing legibility at a distance and the painter's flourish; vinyl displaced the craft in the 1980s and it has revived since the 2010s.

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