Style combination · Contrasts
Corporate Memphis × Yuru-chara
Corporate Memphis draws faceless, placeless figures for global platforms; a yuru-chara is a single named character built from one town's products and legends.
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.
Corporate Memphis Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)
- Type from Yuru-chara
- Colour from Corporate Memphis
- Form from Corporate Memphis
- Composition from Yuru-chara
- Surface from Corporate Memphis
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Yuru-chara
Yay!
Zen Maru Gothic, standing in for Maru gothic (rounded gothic) Japanese type, such as Morisawa's Shin Maru Go, for captions, event banners and goods
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
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Corporate Memphis, with a counter-accent from Yuru-chara. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Corporate Memphis Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)
-
#ffffffground · 36% -
#2f2e41ink · 14% -
#ffc857accent · 18% -
#6c63ffaccent · 14% -
#e3242baccent · 10% -
#ff7f6eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ffffff;
--ink: #2f2e41;
--accent-1: #ffc857;
--accent-2: #6c63ff;
--accent-3: #e3242b;
--accent-4: #ff7f6e;
--font-display: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Hanken Grotesk", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design): Mascots are owned designs: Kumamon's copyright is held by Kumamoto Prefecture, which allows free use in Japan only with its permission and a displayed permit number, and Hikone and Hikonyan's illustrator fought over the character's rights from 2007 through mediation, a 2011 court ruling and a 2012 settlement, so invent an original character for each place and agree rights with the illustrator first. Keep sacred figures out of the joke: Buddhist groups in Nara objected that Sento-kun, a Buddha-like child with deer antlers, insulted the Buddha. And do not use a cute mascot to soften a contested public risk, as with the tritium mascot that Japan's Reconstruction Agency made to promote releasing treated water from Fukushima, pulled a day after its release in April 2021.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Corporate Memphis
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · Polish poster metaphor and painterly ambiguity show how much illustration can say once it stops being generic.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Add riso grain and two spot inks to the figures to escape the over-familiar SaaS sheen and give them printed warmth.
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Pairs well · Its photo-led start-up sibling: pair Corporate Memphis figures with blanding's pastel ground and geometric sans when a brand needs both people and product.
- Brutalist Web Design Contrasts · Brutalism's raw honesty is the opposite of this friendly gloss; reach for it when a brand needs credibility over cheer.
- Memphis Design Contrasts · The original's real colour clash, irony and Sottsass or Du Pasquier patterns are the foil to generic confetti blobs; borrow one genuine Memphis pattern to give the illustration an edge.
- Rubber-Hose Revival (Cartoon Mascot Graphics) Contrasts · Both draw stretched figures in flat colour, but the revival gives each brand its own outlined, nostalgic mascot where Corporate Memphis uses interchangeable faceless people.
- CalArts Style (Rounded Cartoon Character Design) Pairs well · Both use flat fills and simplified figures; borrow its pastel UI-illustration palette, but keep faces and expressions, which Corporate Memphis drops.
- Data Humanism Contrasts · 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.
With Yuru-chara
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Contrasts · Postwar Japanese identities give institutions abstract, grid-built marks; a yuru-chara gives a prefecture a face, a name and a body that walks into festivals and shakes hands.
- Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Pairs well · Borrow the place's own heraldry, a daimyō family crest or the town's emblem: a flat crest on the mascot's sash, banner or packaging anchors the loose figure in local history, as Hikonyan's helmet anchors it in the Ii family's red armour.
- Kawaii Design Contrasts · Both build on rounded, big-headed cute figures, but kawaii sells polished pastel fancy goods for private pleasure, while a yuru-chara speaks for a town in a few bold colours and keeps its awkwardness.
- Newtro (Korean New-Retro) Contrasts · Newtro reissues a firm's own decades-old mascot, polished; a yuru-chara is newly invented for a place and its looseness is left in.
- Superflat Contrasts · Superflat turns Japanese character culture into gallery irony, crowded and cute-grotesque; yuru-chara keeps characters sincere, civic and plain, one figure at a time.
- Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals) Contrasts · Mascot design is exactly what a sealed pack must give up in Chile and Mexico; put the two side by side to show how much of a snack's appeal is carried by a character.
- Rubber-Hose Revival (Cartoon Mascot Graphics) Pairs well · Both build a mascot from the thing it promotes; borrow the yuru-chara's costume-ready frontal figure and licensing for a rubber-hose brand character.
- Natural Wine Label Art Pairs well · Super Glou's drunken-cat mascot and Jauma's cosmic cat work like local mascots; borrow the yuru-chara habit of one soft, recurring character who appears in a new scene for each product.