Stylogeny combining Cottagecore × Slow-Living Editorial

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Style combination · Contrasts

Cottagecore × Slow-Living Editorial

Shares soft natural light and slow living, but is minimal and photographic where cottagecore is floral and illustrated.

From the research on Cottagecore

Mix them and make something Cottagecore Slow-Living Editorial

StillCottagecore × Slow-Living Editorial
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Cottagecore, their arrangement from Slow-Living Editorial, the finish from Cottagecore. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Cottagecore Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)

Type from Slow-Living Editorial
Colour from Cottagecore
Form from Cottagecore
Composition from Slow-Living Editorial
Surface from Cottagecore

02

The type

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

Display · Slow-Living Editorial

Still

EB Garamond, standing in for Garamond, Kinfolk's brand typeface, kept for body text through Charlotte Heal's 2015 redesign (It's Nice That, 2015)

Text · Slow-Living Editorial

The look of Kinfolk, the slow-living quarterly founded in Portland in 2011 and run from Copenhagen since 2015, and of the indie lifestyle titles and Instagram feeds that copied it. Soft, naturally lit photographs of laid tables, wood-and-linen interiors and their unhurried owners sit in wide white margins on matte paper; a classical serif and slender capitals carry little text; colour stays in whites, oatmeal, wood and pastel. By 2014 'Kinfolk' was used as an adjective for a kind of photography.

EB Garamond; Slow-Living Editorial used Garamond, Kinfolk's brand typeface, kept for body text through Charlotte Heal's 2015 redesign and The slender capitals of the KINFOLK masthead, 'the same slender text as on the cover of each of the magazine's issues' (Portland Monthly, 2014), reworked by Abi Huynh in 2015

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Cottagecore, with a counter-accent from Slow-Living Editorial. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Cottagecore Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)

  • #f4ecd8 ground · 36%
  • #4f6b4a ink · 14%
  • #e8c872 accent · 18%
  • #9a7b5f accent · 14%
  • #d9a5a0 accent · 10%
  • #a9b79a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4ecd8;
  --ink: #4f6b4a;
  --accent-1: #e8c872;
  --accent-2: #9a7b5f;
  --accent-3: #d9a5a0;
  --accent-4: #a9b79a;
  --font-display: "EB Garamond", serif;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

Use it with care

Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look): Kinfolk and Cereal are living titles with their own mastheads and photographers: take the method (natural light, wide margins, a quiet serif), shoot or license your own pictures, and never letter the KINFOLK masthead or present a layout as an issue. Critics noted that its early pages pictured mostly young, white and beautiful people; cast, locate and style photographs widely so the calm does not become a single social type. By 2016 the magazine itself was casting more widely (FIT Library blog), so take the later issues, not the early imitators, as the model.

04

The two styles

A vintage-style illustrated poster titled “Slow Days” shows a rustic cottage interior with bread, tea, flowers, books, a lit candle, and a sleeping cat beside a window overlooking the countryside. An elaborate border of flowering vines and strawberries surrounds the scene, with a rabbit, mushrooms, and a moth along the bottom. 2018–present · Global / networked, North America, Western Europe Cottagecore An internet-born pastoral aesthetic of cottage gardens, wildflowers, baking and slow rural life, circulated as mood boards, stickers, packaging, book covers and game art. Its link to Arts and Crafts is one of shared ideals (craft, rural simplicity, folk styles as a counter to industrial production), not a direct visual descent. It has been criticised for romanticising rural life and ignoring rural poverty, and for evoking conservative gender roles, Eurocentrism and heteronormativity. A cream poster headed “SLOW DAYS” shows a sunlit wooden table with a ceramic mug, a bowl of pears, a glass jar of white wildflowers, and a rumpled pale cloth. A wooden chair and window appear behind the table, with leafy shadows falling across the wall and tabletop. 2011–present · North America, Northern Europe, Global / networked Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look) The look of Kinfolk, the slow-living quarterly founded in Portland in 2011 and run from Copenhagen since 2015, and of the indie lifestyle titles and Instagram feeds that copied it. Soft, naturally lit photographs of laid tables, wood-and-linen interiors and their unhurried owners sit in wide white margins on matte paper; a classical serif and slender capitals carry little text; colour stays in whites, oatmeal, wood and pastel. By 2014 'Kinfolk' was used as an adjective for a kind of photography.

05

More combinations

With Cottagecore

With Slow-Living Editorial

Every style combination