Style combination · Contrasts

Corporate Memphis × Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art

Both flatten the human figure, but Douglas's silhouettes are specific and historical where corporate Memphis is generic; study the difference before drawing people flat.

From the research on Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art

Mix them and make something Corporate Memphis Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Corporate Memphis, their arrangement from Corporate Memphis, the finish from Corporate Memphis. 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.

Corporate Memphis Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art

Type from Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Corporate Memphis: Distortion & exaggeration
Stylised figuration
Composition from Corporate Memphis: Isolated object
Generous white space
Surface from Corporate Memphis: Flat

The type

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

Display · Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art

Dawn

Limelight, standing in for Aaron Douglas's hand-lettered Deco capitals on jackets and covers

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 Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art, with a counter-accent from Corporate Memphis. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Corporate Memphis Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art

#efe5cf ground · 36%
#161210 ink · 14%
#e3782b accent · 18%
#6c63ff accent · 14%
#d6b44a accent · 10%
#ff7f6e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe5cf;
  --ink: #161210;
  --accent-1: #e3782b;
  --accent-2: #6c63ff;
  --accent-3: #d6b44a;
  --accent-4: #ff7f6e;
  --font-display: "Limelight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Hanken Grotesk", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art: Douglas built this idiom so that Black artists could picture Black history against minstrel caricature and white primitivist fantasy. Lifted as generic Jazz Age or 'tribal' decoration, the Egyptian profiles, mask-like eyes and black silhouettes can slide back into the stereotypes it answered, so use it to tell Black stories with Black artists and writers, and credit Douglas and the magazines (The Crisis, Opportunity) whose images you draw on.