Style combination · Pairs well

Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay × Internet Ugly

Both are crowd vernaculars made to be copied; run numeric memes and outlined white lines over a found clip, but keep danmaku's lanes and timing instead of the image macro's top-and-bottom caption.

From the research on Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay

Mix them and make something Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay Internet Ugly

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Internet Ugly, their arrangement from Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay, the finish from Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay. 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.

Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular

Type from Internet Ugly: All caps
Condensed display
Colour from Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay: Fluorescent & neon
Monochrome
Form from Internet Ugly: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay: Layered information
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay: Hard offset shadow
Flat

The type

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

Display · Internet Ugly

Wow

Anton, standing in for Impact (Geoffrey Lee, Stephenson Blake, 1965), set white with a black outline

Text · Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay

The bullet-comment layer of Japanese and Chinese video sites, begun on Niconico in December 2006 and taken up by AcFun and Bilibili in 2008–2009. Viewers' one-line comments fly across the playing video from right to left, or sit centred at the top or bottom, each timed to the moment it answers. By default every line is the same white, black-outlined sans at one size; commands add saturated RGB colours and sizes, and viewers set opacity and speed. At climaxes identical lines pile into a 'bullet curtain' over the picture: anonymous crowd writing laid over someone else's image.

Zen Kaku Gothic New; Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay used Arial for Latin letters and digits, then MS PGothic (ＭＳＰゴシック) for Japanese, at weight 600 and The 'gothic' and 'mincho' font commands of Niconico's later player

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay, with a counter-accent from Internet Ugly. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular

#ffffff ground · 36%
#000000 ink · 14%
#ff0000 accent · 18%
#00a2e8 accent · 14%
#00ffff accent · 10%
#ff7f27 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffffff;
  --ink: #000000;
  --accent-1: #ff0000;
  --accent-2: #00a2e8;
  --accent-3: #00ffff;
  --accent-4: #ff7f27;
  --font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay: Danmaku is moving text that starts on its own, runs longer than five seconds and sits on top of other content, so any design that uses it needs a way to pause, hide or thin it (WCAG 2.2.2, which is why platforms build an off switch) and must keep it clear of faces and captions. Real comments are other people's words over footage someone else owns: write your own lines rather than lifting screenshots, and do not fake an audience's enthusiasm in advertising. A live comment layer can also be used to pile abuse on people, and in mainland China the China Netcasting Services Association's rules for short-video platforms of 9 January 2019 require danmaku to be reviewed before it is shown, so moderate any live use.

Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular: Most meme templates are photographs of real people, often children, or licensed stock. Success Kid is Laney Griner's son: the photo has been licensed to advertisers, and in January 2020 she sent a cease-and-desist letter to a congressman whose fundraising campaign used it without permission. Distracted Boyfriend is microstock, and its photographer says use without a proper licence is not allowed. License a template or make a new picture for commercial or political work. Check what a format means now: some characters that spread through 4chan were taken up as hate symbols (the ADL listed Pepe the Frog, Matt Furie's 2005 Boy's Club character, in 2016, while noting that most uses are not hateful). Reaction images of Black people posted by non-Black users and brands read as digital blackface (Lauren Michele Jackson, Teen Vogue, 2017), and deep-fried memes came out of Black Twitter, so credit where formats come from. When brands and campaigns borrow a format, its makers often protest or drop it (Douglas).

The two styles

2006–present · East Asia Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay The bullet-comment layer of Japanese and Chinese video sites, begun on Niconico in December 2006 and taken up by AcFun and Bilibili in 2008–2009. Viewers' one-line comments fly across the playing video from right to left, or sit centred at the top or bottom, each timed to the moment it answers. By default every line is the same white, black-outlined sans at one size; commands add saturated RGB colours and sizes, and viewers set opacity and speed. At climaxes identical lines pile into a 'bullet curtain' over the picture: anonymous crowd writing laid over someone else's image. 2003–present · Global / networked, North America Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular A deliberately amateur image dialect of forums, imageboards and social feeds, named 'Internet Ugly' by Nick Douglas in 2014. Figures are drawn with a mouse in MS Paint, photos are found and crudely pasted together, and captions shout in white Impact capitals with a black outline, top and bottom, or in Comic Sans. Re-saving and 'deep-frying' wear the pixels down. The joke's setup and punchline are the layout, and every template is made for a crowd to copy; some are clean stock photos that only the labels make a meme.