Stylogeny combining Corporate Identity Modernism × Stencil Street Art

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Style combination · Contrasts

Corporate Identity Modernism × Stencil Street Art

Stencil art borrows the repetition and reach of branding to mock it, as OBEY parodies advertising; a black figure sprayed beside a clean corporate mark makes the question of who owns public space visible.

From the research on Stencil Street Art

Mix them and make something Corporate Identity Modernism Stencil Street Art

NoticeCorporate Identity × Stencil Street Art
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Corporate Identity Modernism, their arrangement from Corporate Identity Modernism, the finish from Stencil Street Art. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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 Identity Modernism Stencil Street Art

Type from Corporate Identity Modernism
Colour from Stencil Street Art
Form from Corporate Identity Modernism
Composition from Corporate Identity Modernism
Surface from Stencil Street Art

Corporate Identity Modernism avoids photocopy & distress: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

02

The type

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

Display · Corporate Identity Modernism

Notice

Inter Tight, standing in for Helvetica

Text · Stencil Street Art

Pictures cut rather than drawn: a photograph is reduced to two or three flat tones, cut into card and sprayed onto a wall, usually uninvited, so one hard-edged figure appears in the street, in black with at most one accent colour. Foreshadowed by Ernest Pignon-Ernest's Hiroshima silhouettes (1966), it took shape in 1978 in Amsterdam's punk scene (Hugo Kaagman) and São Paulo (Alex Vallauri), was taken up in Paris by Blek le Rat in the early 1980s, and went global after 2000 with Banksy's satirical stencils and Shepard Fairey's Obey posters and Obama 'Hope' portrait.

Special Elite; Stencil Street Art used Hand-cut stencil capitals, bridged where the counters would otherwise fall out and Industrial and military marking stencils

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Stencil Street Art, with a counter-accent from Corporate Identity Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Corporate Identity Modernism Stencil Street Art

  • #e6e2d8 ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #d3212d accent · 18%
  • #1f3a4d accent · 14%
  • #0a4fa0 accent · 10%
  • #8f8a82 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #e6e2d8;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #d3212d;
  --accent-2: #1f3a4d;
  --accent-3: #0a4fa0;
  --accent-4: #8f8a82;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Special Elite", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Stencil Street Art: Spraying a wall without the owner's consent is vandalism or criminal damage in most jurisdictions, so get permission or a legal wall; a brand faking street stencils is no exception (IBM's 2001 'Peace, Love, and Linux' sidewalk stencils led to arrests and more than US$120,000 in fines). Most stencils start from someone else's photograph, as the AP's dispute over Fairey's Hope poster showed (settled 2011): shoot or license the source image, and do not pass off a pastiche as a Banksy, whose work is authenticated only by Pest Control. Do not use photographs of real victims, or places of real suffering such as separation walls and war ruins, as props for a brand or a joke; by Banksy's own account, a Palestinian man at the West Bank barrier told him they did not want the wall made beautiful.

04

The two styles

A blue circle sits above two mirrored red tapered shapes separated by a widening white gap. Large, bold black lettering reading “Apex” appears underneath on a white background. 1955–1990 · North America, Western Europe, Global / networked Corporate Identity Modernism Modernist reduction applied to corporate communication. A company's whole public face (trademark, logotype, stationery, packaging, vehicles and signage) was unified by an abstract symbol, a single typeface and one colour, all policed by a graphic standards manual. Pioneered by Paul Rand, Chermayeff & Geismar, Unimark and Lippincott & Margulies, it made the reductive mark and the grid the visual language of multinational business and government. A distressed black-and-cream portrait shows a long-haired person looking upward to the right, with hair blowing sideways. Large red stencil lettering reading “BRAVER” sits beneath the portrait on a speckled cream background. 1978–present · Western Europe, Latin America & Caribbean, North America, Global / networked Stencil Street Art Pictures cut rather than drawn: a photograph is reduced to two or three flat tones, cut into card and sprayed onto a wall, usually uninvited, so one hard-edged figure appears in the street, in black with at most one accent colour. Foreshadowed by Ernest Pignon-Ernest's Hiroshima silhouettes (1966), it took shape in 1978 in Amsterdam's punk scene (Hugo Kaagman) and São Paulo (Alex Vallauri), was taken up in Paris by Blek le Rat in the early 1980s, and went global after 2000 with Banksy's satirical stencils and Shepard Fairey's Obey posters and Obama 'Hope' portrait.

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More combinations

With Corporate Identity Modernism

All 28 combinations with Corporate Identity Modernism

With Stencil Street Art

All 10 combinations with Stencil Street Art

Every style combination