Stylogeny combining De Stijl × Memphis Design

Try

Style combination · Contrasts

De Stijl × Memphis Design

Memphis reuses the primaries with squiggles and irony; compare the two to decide whether geometry should be earnest or playful.

From the research on De Stijl

Mix them and make something De Stijl Memphis Design

POPDe Stijl × Memphis Design1917 · 1981
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Memphis Design, their arrangement from De Stijl, the finish from Memphis Design. 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.

De Stijl Memphis Design

Type from De Stijl
Colour from De Stijl
Form from Memphis Design
Composition from De Stijl

Memphis Design avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

Surface from Memphis Design

02

The type

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

Display · De Stijl

Pop

Rubik Mono One; De Stijl used Theo van Doesburg's rectilinear alphabet and Vilmos Huszár's block-letter De Stijl masthead

Text · Memphis Design

The Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own. Clashing colours, speckles, squiggles, zigzags and primitive geometric shapes were combined with deliberate bad taste, mocking modernist good form while quoting 1950s kitsch, Pop and Art Deco.

Jost; Memphis Design used Futura and ITC Avant Garde Gothic

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from De Stijl, with a counter-accent from Memphis Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

De Stijl Memphis Design

  • #f5f3ee ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #f4c20d accent · 18%
  • #ff5a36 accent · 14%
  • #d52b1e accent · 10%
  • #2ec4b6 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f5f3ee;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #f4c20d;
  --accent-2: #ff5a36;
  --accent-3: #d52b1e;
  --accent-4: #2ec4b6;
  --font-display: "Rubik Mono One", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

A geometric poster features the words “NEW ORDER” in heavy black capitals at the upper left. Thick black bars divide an off-white background into unequal rectangles filled with red, blue, yellow, grey, and white. 1917–1931 · Western Europe De Stijl A Dutch movement formed around Theo van Doesburg's journal De Stijl and Piet Mondrian's Neoplasticism, which sought universal harmony through the most elementary means: horizontal and vertical lines, rectangles, the three primaries and black, white and grey. In typography it produced block-constructed letters and orthogonal, asymmetric layouts whose principles flowed directly into the Bauhaus and the New Typography. A dense geometric pattern on a pink background combines turquoise polka-dot triangles, yellow squares with black dashes, blue circles with yellow sprinkles, orange-red zigzags, and scattered squiggles and small shapes. Bold black offset shapes give many motifs a shadowed, layered appearance. 1981–1988 · Southern Europe Memphis Design The Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own. Clashing colours, speckles, squiggles, zigzags and primitive geometric shapes were combined with deliberate bad taste, mocking modernist good form while quoting 1950s kitsch, Pop and Art Deco.

05

More combinations

With De Stijl

With Memphis Design

All 17 combinations with Memphis Design

Every style combination