Style combination · Pairs well

German Book Art Movement × Renaissance Book Typography

Its presses cut their romans after fifteenth-century incunabula; Renaissance margins and rubrics sit naturally beside its drawn initials.

From the research on German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)

Mix them and make something German Book Art Movement Renaissance Book Typography

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Renaissance Book Typography, their arrangement from Renaissance Book Typography, 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.

German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung) Renaissance Book Typography

Type from German Book Art Movement: Humanist & Garalde serif
Blackletter
Colour from German Book Art Movement: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Renaissance Book Typography: Borders & frames
Floral & vegetal
Composition from Renaissance Book Typography: 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 · German Book Art Movement

Tide

UnifrakturMaguntia; 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

Text · Renaissance Book Typography

The printed book as shaped by humanist Italy and France: roman and italic types modelled on humanist handwriting, a single justified text block set in harmonious proportions within generous margins, and woodcut initials, borders and printer's devices as the only ornament. Its page became the default model of the Western book for the next five centuries.

EB Garamond; Renaissance Book Typography used Jenson's roman and Griffo's roman

The colours

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

German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung) Renaissance Book Typography

#f2ead8 ground · 36%
#1b1a18 ink · 14%
#a8322a accent · 18%
#c9b68c accent · 14%
#b8973f accent · 10%
#3f5a6e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2ead8;
  --ink: #1b1a18;
  --accent-1: #a8322a;
  --accent-2: #c9b68c;
  --accent-3: #b8973f;
  --accent-4: #3f5a6e;
  --font-display: "UnifrakturMaguntia", serif;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

Use it with care

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

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.

An aged cream book cover reads “THE GARDEN OF REASON” above a symmetrical illustration of a fruit-bearing tree flanked by two birds and flowering plants. Black leafy vines, rust-red flowers, and ochre leaves fill a rectangular ornamental border.

c. 1460–1600 · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe Renaissance Book Typography The printed book as shaped by humanist Italy and France: roman and italic types modelled on humanist handwriting, a single justified text block set in harmonious proportions within generous margins, and woodcut initials, borders and printer's devices as the only ornament. Its page became the default model of the Western book for the next five centuries.