Style combination · Contrasts

Black Metal Graphics × Grunge Typography

Both made legibility negotiable in the 1990s, but grunge layered and eroded digital type across a broken grid, while black metal draws one logo by hand and centres it in emptiness; pick analogue symmetry or digital disorder.

From the research on Black Metal Graphics

Mix them and make something Black Metal Graphics Grunge Typography

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Black Metal Graphics, their arrangement from Black Metal Graphics, the finish from Grunge Typography. 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.

Black Metal Graphics Grunge Typography

Type from Grunge Typography: Experimental & distorted
Eclectic mixing

Black Metal Graphics avoids eclectic mixing: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Colour from Black Metal Graphics: Monochrome
Dark ground
Form from Black Metal Graphics: Angular & zigzag
Biomorphic curves
Composition from Black Metal Graphics: Central symmetry
Single focal point

Grunge Typography avoids central symmetry: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Surface from Grunge Typography: Photocopy & distress
Grain & noise

The type

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

Display · Grunge Typography

Loud

Rock Salt; Grunge Typography used Template Gothic and FF Trixie

Text · Black Metal Graphics

The visual language of black metal, fixed by Norway's second wave in the early 1990s, now worldwide, since the 2010s borrowed by mainstream acts (Szpajdel's Rihanna and Metallica logos, 2016). A hand-drawn band logo, barely legible, its letters grown into thorns and branches and balanced on a central axis, sits white on black over one bleak picture: a grainy black-and-white photograph of a corpse-painted musician, a church, a forest or a Romantic painting. Early covers, xeroxed like punk's, rejected death metal's bright painted art; the tone is misanthropic, pagan or occult, never ironic.

Special Elite; Black Metal Graphics used Hand-inked thorned, mirrored logotype and Old English Text and Fraktur capitals

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Black Metal Graphics, with a counter-accent from Grunge Typography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Black Metal Graphics Grunge Typography

#0a0a0a ground · 36%
#e6e2d8 ink · 14%
#6f6f6f accent · 18%
#a8322d accent · 14%
#2a2a2a accent · 10%
#a6a6a6 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0a0a0a;
  --ink: #e6e2d8;
  --accent-1: #6f6f6f;
  --accent-2: #a8322d;
  --accent-3: #2a2a2a;
  --accent-4: #a6a6a6;
  --font-display: "Rock Salt", cursive;
  --font-text: "Special Elite", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Black Metal Graphics: The Norwegian scene's early-1990s fame rests partly on real crimes: church arsons from 1992 and two murders. Varg Vikernes of Burzum, sentenced in 1994 for the murder of Euronymous and four church arsons, is credited with bringing neo-Nazi views into the scene, and a small National Socialist black metal minority still spreads them through lyrics and imagery; even Darkthrone had to remove a slogan about race from a 1994 back cover after distributors objected. Cite Burzum sleeves only as history, and take mood from the public-domain Kittelsen and Doré pictures instead. Borrow the mirrored logo, the black field and the bleak photograph, but never a burnt or burning church, a photograph of a real death, or far-right symbols: no Black Sun (Sonnenrad), winged or serifed odal rune, wolfsangel, SS runes or Totenkopf, and no slogan about race or nation in blackletter. Inverted crosses and pentagrams signal hostility to Christianity; weigh them before using them for a general audience. Logos are the commissioned, living work of named letterers such as Szpajdel: commission or credit one rather than copying a band's name or mark.

The two styles

1990–present · Northern Europe, Global / networked Black Metal Graphics The visual language of black metal, fixed by Norway's second wave in the early 1990s, now worldwide, since the 2010s borrowed by mainstream acts (Szpajdel's Rihanna and Metallica logos, 2016). A hand-drawn band logo, barely legible, its letters grown into thorns and branches and balanced on a central axis, sits white on black over one bleak picture: a grainy black-and-white photograph of a corpse-painted musician, a church, a forest or a Romantic painting. Early covers, xeroxed like punk's, rejected death metal's bright painted art; the tone is misanthropic, pagan or occult, never ironic.

A distressed collage poster combines oversized lettering reading “TIDE ROT” with a high-contrast image of a derelict ship on a muddy, rocky shoreline. Torn-looking black, cream, rust-orange and olive patches, scratches, and a cropped facial fragment fill the surrounding space.

1990–2000 · North America, Western Europe Grunge Typography The 1990s magazine and music-industry style in which type was layered, eroded, overlapped and cropped until legibility became negotiable. Made on the Macintosh but deliberately dirty, it combined distressed digital fonts, scanned textures and blurred, cropped photography with layouts that broke the grid on every spread, treating the page as an expressive surface rather than a neutral container for text.