Style combination · Contrasts

Gothic Blackletter × Vyaz

Both pack tall, upright strokes into a dark rhythm, and Shchepkin even called 17th-century vyaz the fraktur style; but blackletter darkens a whole justified page of running text, while vyaz binds one title line into ornament by joining letters on shared stems and nesting small ones between them. Use blackletter for text and vyaz for a single heading band.

From the research on Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

Mix them and make something Gothic Blackletter Vyaz

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Gothic Blackletter, their arrangement from Vyaz, the finish from Gothic Blackletter. 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 Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

Type from Vyaz: Brush & pen calligraphy
Condensed display
Colour from Gothic Blackletter: Limited spot colours
Monochrome
Form from Gothic Blackletter: Angular & zigzag
Rectilinear
Composition from Vyaz: Horror vacui
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from Gothic Blackletter: 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 · Vyaz

Notice

Federant, standing in for Drawn Russian Revival vyaz of about 1900, intricate and in the spirit of Art Nouveau, such as Vrubel's monolinear vyaz

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

The colours

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

Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

#efe6cf ground · 36%
#1b1714 ink · 14%
#b0302a accent · 18%
#b8913a accent · 14%
#2c4a8c accent · 10%
#7a2418 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe6cf;
  --ink: #1b1714;
  --accent-1: #b0302a;
  --accent-2: #b8913a;
  --accent-3: #2c4a8c;
  --accent-4: #7a2418;
  --font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
  --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.

Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering): Most vyaz carries sacred text: prayers, holy names, the titles of Gospels and service books, and inscriptions on icons, bells, church vessels, shrouds and graves. Do not fill a band with invented pseudo-Cyrillic or scramble real Church Slavonic as texture, keep holy names and prayers off throwaway products, and have any text written or checked by a reader of Church Slavonic. For Old Believers the pre-reform book and its lettering remain a matter of faith, so credit and involve their communities rather than lifting their headings as decoration. Vyaz is not only Russian: Bulgarian and Serbian scribes used it before Russia, Romanian scribes from the 15th century, and western and south-western Rus' in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (today's Belarus and Ukraine, with Supraśl in Poland) kept its own plant-derived manner, so credit the book culture a model comes from. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, check whether your audience will read Old Russian display lettering as Russian state or nationalist branding; vyaz is also part of Belarusian and Ukrainian book and icon heritage, so ask how that audience reads it rather than assuming either.