Stylogeny combining Gothic Blackletter × Pixação

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Style combination · Pairs well

Gothic Blackletter × Pixação

Tag reto descends from gothic and runic forms by way of metal logos; set a textura line above a row of straight, pointed tag-reto letters, both in black, to show the lineage from the book page to the façade.

From the research on Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)

Mix them and make something Gothic Blackletter Pixação

RIOTGothic Blackletter × Pixação1180 · 1980
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Pixação, their arrangement from Gothic Blackletter, the finish from Gothic Blackletter. 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.

Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)

Type from Pixação
Colour from Gothic Blackletter
Form from Pixação
Composition from Gothic Blackletter
Surface from Gothic Blackletter

02

The type

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

Display · Pixação

Riot

Sedgwick Ave Display, standing in for Tag reto ('straight tag'), the São Paulo pixo alphabet: straight, long, pointed strokes; each group's letreiro is fixed by its owner, who gives new members a sketch to practise

Text · Gothic Blackletter

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.

Libre Caslon Text; Gothic Blackletter used Gutenberg's 42-line Bible textura and Schwabacher

03

The colours

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

Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)

  • #efe6cf ground · 36%
  • #1b1714 ink · 14%
  • #b0302a accent · 18%
  • #b39f7f accent · 14%
  • #b8913a accent · 10%
  • #2c4a8c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe6cf;
  --ink: #1b1714;
  --accent-1: #b0302a;
  --accent-2: #b39f7f;
  --accent-3: #b8913a;
  --accent-4: #2c4a8c;
  --font-display: "Sedgwick Ave Display", cursive;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", 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.

Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto): Pixação is a living, illegal practice of real groups: under Brazil's Law 12.408 of 2011 pichação remains a crime punishable by three months to a year in detention, while consented graffiti is not, and pixadores risk their lives climbing buildings. Do not copy a real group's letreiro, tag or grife emblem (inside the movement someone who signs a group's name without its owner's permission is a 'clone' and loses respect), and do not invent fake crew names in the style for a brand. If a project wants the look, commission and credit pixadores such as Cripta Djan, and do not use it as edgy decoration while people who write it are still prosecuted and jailed.

04

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. Tall, sharply angular black lettering reads “CIDADE VERTICAL” in two tightly packed rows on a pale cream background. The elongated letters have pointed ends, with forked, arrow-like shapes topping the two I characters. 1980–present · Latin America & Caribbean Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto) The name-writing of São Paulo's pixadores, which since the 1980s has covered walls and façades and, from the 1990s, the upper floors of tower blocks. Group names and personal tags go up in black latex paint, by roller or spray, in tag reto: a straight, elongated, pointed alphabet taken from the rune-like logos on heavy-metal and punk record sleeves. The letters run in level rows scaled to the building's windows and floors, with no fill, outline or colour. The script is written for other pixadores, and height, risk and reach across the city rank the work.

05

More combinations

With Gothic Blackletter

All 15 combinations with Gothic Blackletter

With Pixação

Every style combination