Style combination · Contrasts

Black Metal Graphics × Post-Punk Record Sleeve

Both put one image on a quiet, often black field, but post-punk shrinks, codes or omits the band's name, prints offset on special stock and hides riddles for the art-literate, while black metal makes a hand-drawn, near-illegible logo the centre of a xeroxed, earnest sleeve; choose between a coded name and a sigil.

From the research on Black Metal Graphics

Mix them and make something Black Metal Graphics Post-Punk Record Sleeve

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Post-Punk Record Sleeve, their arrangement from Post-Punk Record Sleeve, 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 Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

Type from Black Metal Graphics: Hand-lettering
Experimental & distorted
Colour from Black Metal Graphics: Monochrome
Dark ground
Form from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Non-representational
Naturalistic depiction
Composition from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Single focal point
Isolated object
Surface from Black Metal Graphics: Grain & noise
Photocopy & distress

Post-Punk Record Sleeve avoids photocopy & distress: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

The type

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

Display · Black Metal Graphics

Amour

UnifrakturMaguntia, standing in for Old English Text and Fraktur capitals

Text · Post-Punk Record Sleeve

The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD. Instead of xerox collage, a sleeve became an art-directed object: one quoted or treated image (a pulsar plot, a Fantin-Latour still life, a Futurist poster, a misty photograph) on a quiet field or edge to edge, the band's name shrunk, coded or left off, riddles and catalogue numbers in its place, printed offset on textured, silver, gold or die-cut stock.

Space Mono; Post-Punk Record Sleeve used Peter Saville's colour-coded alphabet, one coloured block per letter, decoded by a wheel on the back of Power, Corruption & Lies (1983) and used for the title of Blue Monday and Small, ordered sans-serif capitals in the manner of Jan Tschichold's New Typography, which Saville took as his model from the 1978 Factory poster onwards

The colours

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

Black Metal Graphics Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

#0a0a0a ground · 36%
#e6e2d8 ink · 14%
#6f6f6f accent · 18%
#f2c230 accent · 14%
#2a2a2a accent · 10%
#b8963e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0a0a0a;
  --ink: #e6e2d8;
  --accent-1: #6f6f6f;
  --accent-2: #f2c230;
  --accent-3: #2a2a2a;
  --accent-4: #b8963e;
  --font-display: "UnifrakturMaguntia", serif;
  --font-text: "Space Mono", 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.

Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD): The sleeves are in copyright, and several of their quoted images have their own authors, such as Harold Craft's pulsar plot and Bernard Pierre Wolff's photograph of the Appiani tomb: make a new quotation from a public-domain or licensed source rather than copying a Factory, Stiff or 4AD cover or its colour code.

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. 1977–1990 · Western Europe Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD. Instead of xerox collage, a sleeve became an art-directed object: one quoted or treated image (a pulsar plot, a Fantin-Latour still life, a Futurist poster, a misty photograph) on a quiet field or edge to edge, the band's name shrunk, coded or left off, riddles and catalogue numbers in its place, printed offset on textured, silver, gold or die-cut stock.

More combinations

With Black Metal Graphics

All 11 combinations with Black Metal Graphics

With Post-Punk Record Sleeve

All 14 combinations with Post-Punk Record Sleeve

Every style combination