Style combination · Contrasts

Cyberpunk Visual Style × Vaporwave

Its pastel, ironic calm (pastel is core to its palette) against cyberpunk's dark, hostile density makes a useful opposite.

From the research on Cyberpunk Visual Style

Mix them and make something Cyberpunk Visual Style Vaporwave

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Vaporwave, their arrangement from Cyberpunk Visual Style, the finish from Cyberpunk Visual Style. 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.

Cyberpunk Visual Style Vaporwave

Type from Vaporwave: Wide letterspacing
Eclectic mixing
Colour from Cyberpunk Visual Style: Dark ground
Fluorescent & neon
Form from Vaporwave: Naturalistic depiction
Geometric primitives
Composition from Cyberpunk Visual Style: Horror vacui
Layered information
Surface from Cyberpunk Visual Style: Glitch
Grain & noise

The type

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

Display · Vaporwave

Future

Syncopate, standing in for Full-width Latin text (ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ)

Text · Cyberpunk Visual Style

A dystopian urban look of high technology and low life: night-city scenes in which neon signs, rain-slicked surfaces and glowing screens crowd a dark ground. Bilingual Latin and East Asian signage, grimy overload and green-cyan terminal glyphs mark it. It grew from Blade Runner, Akira and Neuromancer.

VT323; Cyberpunk Visual Style used Japanese and Chinese neon signage characters beside Latin lettering and Monospace terminal type

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Cyberpunk Visual Style, with a counter-accent from Vaporwave. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Cyberpunk Visual Style Vaporwave

#0b0c14 ground · 36%
#39ff14 ink · 14%
#05d9e8 accent · 18%
#ff2a6d accent · 14%
#05ffa1 accent · 10%
#d1a516 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #0b0c14;
  --ink: #39ff14;
  --accent-1: #05d9e8;
  --accent-2: #ff2a6d;
  --accent-3: #05ffa1;
  --accent-4: #d1a516;
  --font-display: "Syncopate", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "VT323", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Cyberpunk Visual Style: Cyberpunk's East Asian cityscapes are often criticised as techno-Orientalism, which casts Asia as futuristic yet cold and dehumanising; Blade Runner and Neuromancer are both critiqued on these grounds. Do not use Japanese or Chinese script as exotic decoration or set meaningless characters on every sign; use real, correct text, and do not make Asian people or places the faceless backdrop of a dystopia.

The two styles

1982–present · Global / networked, North America, East Asia Cyberpunk Visual Style A dystopian urban look of high technology and low life: night-city scenes in which neon signs, rain-slicked surfaces and glowing screens crowd a dark ground. Bilingual Latin and East Asian signage, grimy overload and green-cyan terminal glyphs mark it. It grew from Blade Runner, Akira and Neuromancer.

A large classical sculpted head rises from a turquoise swimming pool beneath a striped yellow-pink sun, surrounded by palm trees, waterfalls, city buildings and tropical foliage. Floating computer windows, a dolphin, cherry blossoms, a compact disc and a wireframe globe fill the pink-and-purple sky beneath the title “DREAM POOL.”

2011–2017 · Global / networked, North America Vaporwave An internet-born microgenre and visual aesthetic that remixes the debris of late-20th-century consumer culture (Windows 95 dialogs, classical busts, palm trees, mall interiors, Japanese text, early 3D renders) in pastel pinks and cyans. Emerging around 2011 from records by James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Vektroid, it is at once nostalgic homage and deadpan critique of corporate optimism.