Style combination · Contrasts

Corporate Memphis × Data Humanism

Both aim to feel warm and human, but Corporate Memphis draws generic faceless figures for mood, while data humanism draws the specific data of specific people. Replace stock warmth with a drawing of real data when a brand needs sincerity.

From the research on Data Humanism

Mix them and make something Corporate Memphis Data Humanism

A colourful illustrated poster titled “KIND DAYS” shows smiling people reaching toward one another, surrounded by flowing trails of dots, triangles, squares and dashes. A three-column section at the bottom explains and counts different kinds of everyday kindness. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Data Humanism, the form from Corporate Memphis, the composition from Data Humanism. Not a real or historical work.

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.

Corporate Memphis Data Humanism

Type from Data Humanism: Hand-lettering
Colour from Corporate Memphis: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Corporate Memphis: Distortion & exaggeration
Stylised figuration
Composition from Data Humanism: Layered information
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from Data Humanism: Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · Data Humanism

Hello

Caveat, standing in for The designer's own handwriting in pen or pencil for titles, legends and annotations (the Dear Data postcards; the red handwritten script of Lupi's Print manifesto, 2017)

Text · Corporate Memphis

The flat vector illustration style that became the default visual voice of big tech in the late 2010s: faceless, ethnically non-specific figures with elongated limbs and tiny heads, drawn in bright flat colour among blobs, leaves and confetti. Codified in Buck's Alegria system for Facebook (2017) and spread by open libraries such as unDraw and Humaaans, it was later named, half-mockingly, after the Memphis Group.

Hanken Grotesk; Corporate Memphis used Circular and Airbnb Cereal

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Corporate Memphis, with a counter-accent from Data Humanism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Corporate Memphis Data Humanism

#ffffff ground · 36%
#2f2e41 ink · 14%
#ffc857 accent · 18%
#6c63ff accent · 14%
#e0574a accent · 10%
#ff7f6e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffffff;
  --ink: #2f2e41;
  --accent-1: #ffc857;
  --accent-2: #6c63ff;
  --accent-3: #e0574a;
  --accent-4: #ff7f6e;
  --font-display: "Caveat", cursive;
  --font-text: "Hanken Grotesk", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Data Humanism: Data portraits are usually drawn from real people's lives (health, moods, relationships, locations): get consent and anonymise before publishing other people's personal data. Because the custom encodings cannot be read at a glance, give a plain-text summary and the key alongside the drawing for readers who use screen readers or are in a hurry.