Style combination · Contrasts

Black Metal Graphics × Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

Norway's second-wave black metal put Theodor Kittelsen's pictures on Burzum's Filosofem (1996), quoted blackletter and kept a pagan tone in grainy black and white; set one Munthe-style saga vignette against such a sleeve to show a decorative national revival turned to misanthropy, minding the far-right uses named in the caution.

From the research on Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

Mix them and make something Black Metal Graphics Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics, their arrangement from Black Metal Graphics, the finish from Black Metal Graphics. 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 Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

Type from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics: Hand-lettering
Blackletter
Colour from Black Metal Graphics: Monochrome
Dark ground
Form from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics: Stylised figuration
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from Black Metal Graphics: Central symmetry
Single focal point
Surface from Black Metal Graphics: Grain & noise
Photocopy & distress

The type

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

Display · Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

Reverie

UnifrakturMaguntia, standing in for The hand-lettered text of Draumkvæde (1904): a pen hand of blackletter character with long swashed ascenders and descenders, modelled on Norse saga manuscripts of the 13th and early 14th centuries, above all Codex Frisianus (c. 1300–1325), with ornamented capitals in red, some roman and some blackletter; drawn by Aug. Sørensen after Munthe's models

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 Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Black Metal Graphics Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

#0a0a0a ground · 36%
#e6e2d8 ink · 14%
#6f6f6f accent · 18%
#c9932e accent · 14%
#2a2a2a accent · 10%
#a3342b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0a0a0a;
  --ink: #e6e2d8;
  --accent-1: #6f6f6f;
  --accent-2: #c9932e;
  --accent-3: #2a2a2a;
  --accent-4: #a3342b;
  --font-display: "UnifrakturMaguntia", serif;
  --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.

Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism): In Norway the fascist Nasjonal Samling (1933–45) took a golden sun cross on red, which it claimed as St Olav's shield, for its emblem, leaned heavily on Viking art and symbolism and built on romantic nationalism, so keep saga warriors, dragon ships and the Olav cross away from ethnic-nationalist framing. Old signs near this material, the othala rune, the sun cross (also called Odin's cross) and Odin's valknut, are used by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, though non-racist pagans also use the othala rune and the valknut: check how such a sign reads in context before borrowing it. Gallen-Kallela's 1918 insignia for the White Army's Order of the Cross of Liberty set a golden swastika into the cross: do not borrow it. Karelianism cast Karelia as a refuge of authentic Finnishness, and some of its ideas later fed the irredentist Greater Finland project, so do not present Karelian or Orthodox folk culture as merely Finland's past: Karelians are a living people with their own language and crafts. In these decades Norway's Norwegianisation policy pressed the Sámi to assimilate: do not fold Sámi duodji motifs into this Norse ornament.

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. 1880–1922 · Northern Europe Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism) The flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament. Gerhard Munthe set the woodcut-like pen style and blackletter type of the 1899 saga edition, had Draumkvæde (1904) hand-lettered after Norse saga manuscripts, and designed tapestries of stiff myth figures in flat folk colour; Akseli Gallen-Kallela gave the Kalevala bold outlines and flat colour in woodcuts, frescoes, ryijy rugs and book vignettes; Dragestil timber buildings carried dragon heads.