Stylogeny combining Czech Poetist Book Design × Kinetic Typography

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Style combination · Pairs well

Czech Poetist Book Design × Kinetic Typography

Abeceda's dancer-as-letter photographs are a print ancestor of type that moves; borrow the idea of a body performing each glyph for motion identities.

From the research on Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil)

Teige's Abeceda posed a dancer as each letter; borrow its body-as-glyph idea to give motion type a human performer.

From the research on Kinetic Typography & Variable Type

Mix them and make something Czech Poetist Book Design Kinetic Typography

YAY!Czech Poetist × Kinetic Typography1922 · 2016
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Czech Poetist Book Design, their arrangement from Czech Poetist Book Design, the finish from Kinetic Typography. 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.

Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil) Kinetic Typography & Variable Type

Type from Kinetic Typography
Colour from Czech Poetist Book Design
Form from Czech Poetist Book Design
Composition from Czech Poetist Book Design
Surface from Kinetic Typography

02

The type

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

Display · Kinetic Typography

Yay!

Inter Tight, standing in for Variable grotesques with weight and width axes (e.g. Roboto Flex)

Text · Czech Poetist Book Design

The book and magazine design of the Czech Devětsil circle, where Karel Teige and his colleagues turned constructivist tools (asymmetry, sans and slab capitals, heavy bars, photomontage) toward Poetism's lyrical celebration of travel, cinema, jazz and the circus. Covers and 'picture poems' set type among postcards, ocean liners and aeroplanes, and in Abeceda (1926) a dancer's body poses as each letter of the alphabet.

Inter; Czech Poetist Book Design used Jobbing grotesque capitals from Prague print shops and Egyptienne slab-serif display capitals

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Czech Poetist Book Design, with a counter-accent from Kinetic Typography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil) Kinetic Typography & Variable Type

  • #f2ebdc ground · 36%
  • #161514 ink · 14%
  • #e9b52c accent · 18%
  • #ff3d1f accent · 14%
  • #2b3dff accent · 10%
  • #2459a6 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2ebdc;
  --ink: #161514;
  --accent-1: #e9b52c;
  --accent-2: #ff3d1f;
  --accent-3: #2b3dff;
  --accent-4: #2459a6;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

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The two styles

A retro travel poster reading “SOLAR TRIP” combines a large black-and-white image of a smiling woman in a swimsuit with a coastal town, a vintage bus on a winding seaside road, and divers above the water. Red diagonal shapes, blue stripes and sea, a yellow sun, and rows of dots decorate the cream background. 1922–1938 · Central Europe Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil) The book and magazine design of the Czech Devětsil circle, where Karel Teige and his colleagues turned constructivist tools (asymmetry, sans and slab capitals, heavy bars, photomontage) toward Poetism's lyrical celebration of travel, cinema, jazz and the circus. Covers and 'picture poems' set type among postcards, ocean liners and aeroplanes, and in Abeceda (1926) a dancer's body poses as each letter of the alphabet. The word “PHASE” fills the square in extremely tall, heavy letters on black. Repeated, warped outlines shrink toward a horizontal middle line, with off-white fading into orange-red above and vivid blue filling most of the lower half. 2016–present · Global / networked, North America, Western Europe Kinetic Typography & Variable Type Typography as the moving image: letterforms that stretch, squash, rotate and morph along variable-font axes, loop seamlessly and cut to the beat of music, used for identities, social-media posters and digital out-of-home screens. Enabled by OpenType variable fonts (2016) and popularised by studios such as DIA, it treats a typeface with axes and a motion toolkit, not a fixed logo, as the core of a brand.

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