Style combination · Pairs well

Gothic Blackletter × German Book Art Movement

Its artists drew new Frakturen beside their romans, so a Fraktur text with a broad-pen title stays within the movement's own range.

From the research on German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)

Mix them and make something Gothic Blackletter German Book Art Movement

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Gothic Blackletter, their arrangement from German Book Art Movement, the finish from German Book Art Movement. 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.

Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)

Type from Gothic Blackletter: Blackletter
Tight setting
Colour from Gothic Blackletter: Limited spot colours
Monochrome
Form from Gothic Blackletter: Angular & zigzag
Rectilinear
Composition from German Book Art Movement: Classical text block
Central symmetry
Surface from German Book Art Movement: Paper & letterpress bite
Carved line

The type

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

Display · Gothic Blackletter

Notice

UnifrakturMaguntia, standing in for Gutenberg's 42-line Bible textura (Mainz, c. 1454–55)

Text · German Book Art Movement

The German reform of the book, from the magazine Pan (1895) to the private presses that ended around 1933. After Morris's Kelmscott Press, artists, printers and publishers treated a book as one work in which text, type, illustration, paper, presswork and binding agree. A Jugendstil start of floral borders and Beardsley-like drawing gave way, from about 1900, to a typographic phase: artist-drawn romans and Frakturen, hand-press printing on handmade paper, and drawn titles and woodcut initials as the only ornament. After 1918 illustration returned, as at the Cranach-Presse.

EB Garamond; German Book Art Movement used Behrens-Schrift (Peter Behrens, Gebr. Klingspor, 1902; semibold 1901), followed by Behrens-Antiqua and Behrens-Kursiv and Ehmcke-Antiqua and Ehmcke-Kursiv (Flinsch, 1908–1910; the Antiqua is dated 1908 or 1909/10) and Ehmcke-Fraktur

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Gothic Blackletter, with a counter-accent from German Book Art Movement. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)

#efe6cf ground · 36%
#1b1714 ink · 14%
#b0302a accent · 18%
#b8913a accent · 14%
#c9b68c accent · 10%
#2c4a8c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe6cf;
  --ink: #1b1714;
  --accent-1: #b0302a;
  --accent-2: #b8913a;
  --accent-3: #c9b68c;
  --accent-4: #2c4a8c;
  --font-display: "UnifrakturMaguntia", serif;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

Use it with care

Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition: Blackletter carries political weight in German-speaking countries: the Nazi regime pushed Fraktur as the German script in its first years before banning it in January 1941 as supposed 'Schwabacher Jewish letters', and neo-Nazis still use broken scripts. In the United States, too, certain blackletter faces are associated with hate groups, on tattoos and clothing. Check how a blackletter wordmark will read, especially for anything German, national or political. Cholo placas are territorial inscriptions of Los Angeles Latino street writing with their own codes: do not copy a real neighbourhood's placa or roll call, and commission or credit Chicano letterers (such as Chaz Bojórquez) rather than borrowing their menace as decoration.

German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung): Fraktur carries political weight in German-speaking countries: the Nazi regime pushed it as the German script in its first years before banning it in January 1941 (see the blackletter-fraktur caution). Several of the movement's presses and artists were active up to the 1933 seizure of power, after which Harry Graf Kessler of the Cranach-Presse never returned to Germany. Check how a Fraktur page or a 'German book art' label will read, especially for anything national or political.

The two styles

Large black Gothic lettering reading “Frost Wacht” fills an aged cream poster, surrounded by curling black foliage, red berries, and two inward-facing black birds. Red, blue, and ochre starbursts and a zigzag border frame the symmetrical design.

c. 1180–present · Central Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, North America, Global / networked Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition The broken scripts of the Latin West. Textualis, a book hand from the late 12th century (Rotunda its rounder Italian form), went into type with Gutenberg's 42-line Bible (Mainz, c. 1454–55); Schwabacher followed from 1472, and Fraktur was cut for Maximilian I's Prayer Book (1513). Curves break into angles; tight justified pages read as a dark, even weave with red rubrics. Fraktur set German text until the Nazi ban of 1941. Elsewhere it had long become a display letter, and today signals age, gravity or menace on mastheads, beer labels, metal logos and cholo lettering. 1895–1933 · Central Europe German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung) The German reform of the book, from the magazine Pan (1895) to the private presses that ended around 1933. After Morris's Kelmscott Press, artists, printers and publishers treated a book as one work in which text, type, illustration, paper, presswork and binding agree. A Jugendstil start of floral borders and Beardsley-like drawing gave way, from about 1900, to a typographic phase: artist-drawn romans and Frakturen, hand-press printing on handmade paper, and drawn titles and woodcut initials as the only ornament. After 1918 illustration returned, as at the Cranach-Presse.