Style combination · Pairs well
Dada × Victorian Letterpress
Raid Victorian wood type and stock ornaments as the Dadaists did, but scatter them instead of centring them.
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 Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from Dada
- Colour from Victorian Letterpress
- Form from Victorian Letterpress
- Composition from Dada
- Surface from Victorian Letterpress
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Dada
Rise
Alfa Slab One; Dada used Found wood poster type and Mixed grotesques, Egyptians and Fraktur from the jobbing printer's case
Text · Victorian Letterpress
The commercial jobbing print of the industrial century: posters, playbills, auction notices and ephemera built from a flood of new display types (fat faces, Egyptians, grotesques, Tuscans and condensed wood type). Lines are centred and each is set in a different face and size to fill the measure, framed in rules and stock borders and printed in black with one or two flat colours.
Zilla Slab; Victorian Letterpress used Fat face romans and Egyptian / Antique slab serifs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Victorian Letterpress, with a counter-accent from Dada. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Dada Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
-
#efe4c9ground · 36% -
#1b1a17ink · 14% -
#b3322baccent · 18% -
#d9b45aaccent · 14% -
#24477daccent · 10% -
#8a8174accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe4c9;
--ink: #1b1a17;
--accent-1: #b3322b;
--accent-2: #d9b45a;
--accent-3: #24477d;
--accent-4: #8a8174;
--font-display: "Alfa Slab One", serif;
--font-text: "Zilla Slab", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Dada
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · The polar opposite of grid order; let one Dada collision break into a Swiss layout to crack its composure.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Use Dada's random collage as raw material and Surrealist dream logic to give the absurdity a narrative thread.
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Punk zines rediscovered Dada cut-and-paste; combine them for ransom-note type with a sharper political edge.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · Dada's chance operations expose what Ulm's method suppresses; one deliberately random element can humanise an over-engineered system.
- Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich) Contrasts · George Grosz drew for Simplicissimus but in Berlin Dada turned satire into photomontage and typographic chaos; choose Simplicissimus for a drawn, legible joke, Dada for a cut-up assault.
- Stenberg Brothers Constructivist Film Poster Pairs well · Dada's montage supplies the method; the Stenbergs discipline it into a diagonal composition with a clear product to sell.
With Victorian Letterpress
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign writers and type founders traded letterforms; add brushed shading and drop shadows to wood-type headlines for a street-made feel.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revived Victorian display faces with irony; mix one wood-type headline with modern illustration for the same knowing nostalgia.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · One face, flush left and white space against a centred clamour of faces: use the contrast to test whether hierarchy needs variety at all.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Morris reacted against exactly this commercial clutter; set the two side by side to show craft restraint versus jobbing exuberance.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · A Victorian mixed-face handbill is the clutter Ulm's one-family rule was meant to cure; use it as a before-and-after foil.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Contrasts · Its black-letter-dense, type-and-ornament jobbing page is the opposite of a picture-led page; combine them by hanging a wood-type title over a flat colour picture.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.
- Urdu Katib Lithography Contrasts · Movable-type jobbing print is the technology Urdu turned down; set its centred, mixed metal faces against a flowing, hand-ruled lithographic page.