Stylogeny combining Drum Magazine × International Typographic Style

Try

Style combination · Contrasts

Drum Magazine × International Typographic Style

The same decade's neutral grid and objective photography against Drum's punchy cover lines, hand-tinted pin-ups and crowded boxes.

From the research on Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism

Mix them and make something Drum Magazine International Typographic Style

INDEXDrum Magazine × International Typographic
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Drum Magazine, their arrangement from International Typographic Style, the finish from Drum Magazine. 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.

Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism International Typographic Style

Type from Drum Magazine
Colour from International Typographic Style
Form from Drum Magazine
Composition from International Typographic Style
Surface from Drum Magazine

02

The type

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

Display · Drum Magazine

Index

Anton, standing in for Condensed gothic capitals (the masthead, in white out of a red box at top left: THE AFRICAN DRUM in June 1951, DRUM after Bailey renamed it)

Text · International Typographic Style

A post-war refinement of the New Typography in which the mathematical grid, objective photography and neo-grotesque sans-serifs were used to communicate with clarity and neutrality. Taught at the Basel and Zurich schools, it became the default language of international corporate and institutional communication.

Inter; International Typographic Style used Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from Drum Magazine. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism International Typographic Style

  • #f2f0e9 ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #e1251b accent · 18%
  • #f3c934 accent · 14%
  • #1f4e9c accent · 10%
  • #7a7a7a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2f0e9;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #e1251b;
  --accent-2: #f3c934;
  --accent-3: #1f4e9c;
  --accent-4: #7a7a7a;
  --font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism: Drum's photographs show real, named people, among them prisoners, farm labourers and protesters exposed to humiliation or danger under apartheid, and women cast as pin-ups by a magazine owned and edited by men. Many of the photographs are still under copyright in Bailey's African History Archive (BAHA), and the Drum name and masthead are owned by Media24. Borrow the system (candid black-and-white picture features, hand-tinted cover portraits, boxed punchy cover lines), never a particular photograph, the Drum name or masthead, or a real person's likeness. Do not fabricate 'documentary' scenes of real events or of apartheid-era suffering, and never present a generated image as a Drum photograph or a historical record. Photograph or license your own named subjects; in a generated image, show the subject the brief supplies, dressed and posed with dignity, never an anonymous sexualised pin-up or generic 'township' Black people as retro decor. Drum's glamour sat beside full-page skin-lightener advertisements and sponsored beauty contests: do not lighten skin tones in hand-tinting or revive that beauty ideal.

04

The two styles

A distressed vintage-style music poster features a large black-and-white image of a woman singing into a microphone, with smaller photographs of a saxophonist, a smiling couple, and dancers down the left. Oversized cream lettering on red reads “NEW BEAT,” alongside a yellow headline panel and a red footer reading “Music Lives Here.” 1951–1965 · Sub-Saharan Africa Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism The picture magazine of Black urban Africa in the 1950s. Drum adapted the Life and Picture Post formula to Johannesburg: Jürgen Schadeberg, its photographer and layout artist, and the Black photographers he trained filled it with close, candid black-and-white pictures of jazz, boxing, shebeens, defiance and undercover exposés, behind covers of hand-tinted stars and cover girls framed by a red-box masthead and boxed cover lines. By 1959 it distributed 240,000 copies a month across Africa. The words “Urban Systems” appear in large black and red lettering at the upper left of an off-white cover. Tall blue, black and grey rectangular blocks rise from the bottom, with fine vertical dividing lines and a red circle at the upper right. 1950–1975 · Central Europe International Typographic Style A post-war refinement of the New Typography in which the mathematical grid, objective photography and neo-grotesque sans-serifs were used to communicate with clarity and neutrality. Taught at the Basel and Zurich schools, it became the default language of international corporate and institutional communication.

05

More combinations

With Drum Magazine

With International Typographic Style

All 97 combinations with International Typographic Style

Every style combination