Stylogeny combining West African Barbershop × Tingatinga Painting

Try

Style combination · Pairs well

West African Barbershop × Tingatinga Painting

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.

From the research on Tingatinga Painting

Mix them and make something West African Barbershop Tingatinga Painting

SQUAREWest African × Tingatinga Painting1950 · 1968
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Tingatinga Painting, their arrangement from West African Barbershop, the finish from West African Barbershop. 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 Tingatinga Painting

Type from West African Barbershop
Colour from Tingatinga Painting
Form from Tingatinga Painting

West African Barbershop avoids distortion & exaggeration: this is where the two pull against each other.

Composition from West African Barbershop
Surface from West African Barbershop

02

The type

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

Display · West African Barbershop

Square

Bungee, standing in for Outlined, drop-shadowed block capitals by sign painters

Text · Tingatinga Painting

A Tanzanian popular painting school begun in Dar es Salaam by Edward Tingatinga (1932–1972), who from 1968 painted animals, birds and village scenes in glossy bicycle enamel on square hardboard ceiling boards for residents and tourists. One flat ground colour carries black-outlined, caricatural animals with patterned bodies. Its roots are debated: Makua and Makonde hut-wall painting, Congolese pictures sold in the city. Relatives and pupils carried it on, moving to canvas from 1989, organising as the Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society in 1990 and adding crowded city scenes and spirit themes.

Space Grotesk; Tingatinga Painting used Enamel-painted block-capital artist's signatures along the lower edge of the panel and Irregular hand-painted capitals for any Swahili or English title or caption that must accompany Tingatinga-derived graphics

03

The colours

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

West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs Tingatinga Painting

  • #f5f1e6 ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #f2b705 accent · 18%
  • #d7261e accent · 14%
  • #1c75bc accent · 10%
  • #2e9e48 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f5f1e6;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #f2b705;
  --accent-2: #d7261e;
  --accent-3: #1c75bc;
  --accent-4: #2e9e48;
  --font-display: "Bungee", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Space Grotesk", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Tingatinga Painting: Tingatinga is the living livelihood of named Tanzanian painters, many in the Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society in Dar es Salaam, and its market has long been undercut by fakes: copies of the founder's lion, peacock, leopard and buffalo were sold signed 'E. S. Tingatinga'. Never add Tingatinga's or any painter's signature, or a cooperative name, to generated work, and never present it as an original painting; commission, buy from or credit the painters by name instead. Do not call it generic 'African' or 'tribal' art, or dismiss it as 'airport art'. Its roots are debated, so do not present it as rootless or as a mere copy of Makua and Makonde hut-wall painting, and do not repeat the disputed claim that Tingatinga was Mozambican, which his family and the cooperative reject. Shetani and witchcraft scenes draw on Makua and Makonde belief; picture them as the brief's community understands them, not as spooky decoration.

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). A large black elephant with an upraised trunk and long ivory-coloured tusks stands against a bright yellow background. Its body is filled with red, blue, green and cream flowers, leaves and dots, beneath the words “JAMBO PANYA.” 1968–present · Sub-Saharan Africa Tingatinga Painting A Tanzanian popular painting school begun in Dar es Salaam by Edward Tingatinga (1932–1972), who from 1968 painted animals, birds and village scenes in glossy bicycle enamel on square hardboard ceiling boards for residents and tourists. One flat ground colour carries black-outlined, caricatural animals with patterned bodies. Its roots are debated: Makua and Makonde hut-wall painting, Congolese pictures sold in the city. Relatives and pupils carried it on, moving to canvas from 1989, organising as the Tingatinga Arts Cooperative Society in 1990 and adding crowded city scenes and spirit themes.

05

More combinations

With West African Barbershop

With Tingatinga Painting

Every style combination