Stylogeny combining Dada × Surrealist Graphics

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Style combination · Pairs well

Dada × Surrealist Graphics

Use Dada's random collage as raw material and Surrealist dream logic to give the absurdity a narrative thread.

From the research on Dada

Mix them and make something Dada Surrealist Graphics

LoudDada × Surrealist Graphics1916 · 1924
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Surrealist Graphics, their arrangement from Dada, the finish from Dada. 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.

Dada Surrealist Graphics

Type from Dada
Colour from Surrealist Graphics
Form from Surrealist Graphics
Composition from Dada
Surface from Dada

02

The type

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

Display · Dada

Loud

Alfa Slab One; Dada used Found wood poster type and Mixed grotesques, Egyptians and Fraktur from the jobbing printer's case

Text · Surrealist Graphics

Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious. Its graphic legacy (uncanny collage from old engravings, solarised and cameraless photographs, impossible juxtapositions painted with illusionistic precision) passed through magazines like Minotaure into fashion, advertising and book design on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bodoni Moda; Surrealist Graphics used Artists' hand-lettered mastheads and Didone and Victorian display faces lifted from 19th-century catalogues

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Surrealist Graphics, with a counter-accent from Dada. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Dada Surrealist Graphics

  • #1d1b2e ground · 36%
  • #efe8d8 ink · 14%
  • #a24a2a accent · 18%
  • #c62a1e accent · 14%
  • #d8b77a accent · 10%
  • #6f8fb5 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #1d1b2e;
  --ink: #efe8d8;
  --accent-1: #a24a2a;
  --accent-2: #c62a1e;
  --accent-3: #d8b77a;
  --accent-4: #6f8fb5;
  --font-display: "Alfa Slab One", serif;
  --font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}

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The two styles

1916–1924 · Central Europe, Western Europe Dada Born in wartime Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 and spreading to Berlin, Hanover, Cologne and Paris, Dada used chance, absurdity and provocation against the culture that had produced the war. Its journals, posters and photomontages tumbled found type, ads and photographs into anarchic compositions that treated every letter as raw material and every rule of legibility as a target. A distressed, surreal collage combines a large woman's face with a curling seashell, stone staircases, ruined arches, and cliffside buildings above a blue sea. An orange fish floats in the foreground, a tiny person stands on the stairs, and a golden disc hangs among clouds beside the title “The Drift.” 1924–1960 · Western Europe, North America Surrealist Graphics Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious. Its graphic legacy (uncanny collage from old engravings, solarised and cameraless photographs, impossible juxtapositions painted with illusionistic precision) passed through magazines like Minotaure into fashion, advertising and book design on both sides of the Atlantic.

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More combinations

With Dada

With Surrealist Graphics

All 18 combinations with Surrealist Graphics

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