Style combination · Contrasts

DTC 'Blanding' × Hipster Artisanal Revival

Where this dressed new firms as old ones, blanding dressed them as frictionless and new, with lowercase geometric sans, pastels and white space; set the two side by side to place a brand between heritage and novelty.

From the research on Hipster Artisanal Revival

Mix them and make something DTC 'Blanding' Hipster Artisanal Revival

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Hipster Artisanal Revival, their arrangement from DTC 'Blanding', the finish from Hipster Artisanal Revival. 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.

DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Hipster Artisanal Revival

Type from DTC 'Blanding': Geometric sans
Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Colour from DTC 'Blanding': Pastel
Flat fields

Hipster Artisanal Revival avoids pastel: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Form from Hipster Artisanal Revival: Emblems & badges
Geometric primitives
Composition from DTC 'Blanding': Isolated object
Generous white space
Surface from Hipster Artisanal Revival: Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · DTC 'Blanding'

Hello

Hanken Grotesk, standing in for Circular (Laurenz Brunner, Lineto, 2013)

Text · Hipster Artisanal Revival

The trade-mark look of the 2007–2018 craft boom, which dressed new coffee roasters, breweries and stationers as nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century firms. A centred one-ink badge holds a line-drawn icon, crossed arrows or an X with words in its quadrants, a triangle and an 'Est.' date for a firm a year old, in tracked sans capitals and a flowing script on kraft, cream or chalkboard. Stock 'Hipster Badges' made it a template; by 2012–13 trend reports and parodies called it overdone, and by 2018 it had matured into colourless, detailed monoline badges that left the arrows and scripts behind.

Jost; Hipster Artisanal Revival used Wisdom Script (James T. Edmondson, Lost Type, 2011), originally drawn for the 'Woods of Wisdom' poster series and Brothers (John Downer, Emigre, 1999), after a turn-of-the-century chromolithographed Cole Brothers circus letterhead

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from DTC 'Blanding', with a counter-accent from Hipster Artisanal Revival. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Hipster Artisanal Revival

#faf7f2 ground · 36%
#2b2b2b ink · 14%
#d27c5d accent · 18%
#8e2f25 accent · 14%
#f4cfc8 accent · 10%
#c4a27a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #faf7f2;
  --ink: #2b2b2b;
  --accent-1: #d27c5d;
  --accent-2: #8e2f25;
  --accent-3: #f4cfc8;
  --accent-4: #c4a27a;
  --font-display: "Hanken Grotesk", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Hipster Artisanal Revival: The hipster fashion and branding of the same years also borrowed pseudo-Native 'tribal' dress: Adrienne Keene's Native Appropriations (2010) answered the fashion for 'hipster headdresses' by noting that eagle feathers 'have to be earned', and in 2012 the Navajo Nation sued Urban Outfitters over goods sold under the 'Navajo' name. Keep to arrows, triangles and trade-mark devices; do not add feathered headdresses, war bonnets or 'tribal' and 'Navajo' patterns as a heritage shorthand.

The two styles

A minimalist shopping homepage shows a sage-green water bottle with a loop handle beneath the large terracotta words “good days” on an off-white background. Small navigation links, search and shopping bag icons, and a pink “shop now” button surround the central product.

2012–2022 · North America, Global / networked DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism The friendly, frictionless minimalism of 2010s direct-to-consumer start-ups, built for the phone screen, the Instagram feed and the unboxing. Lowercase geometric or neo-grotesque wordmarks, one muted signature colour such as millennial pink, sage or terracotta, seamless-backdrop product photography and chatty copy made mattresses, razors and suitcases look interchangeable, a sameness critics called 'blanding' before brands swung to colourful maximalism around 2021–2022.

A distressed rust-red oval badge on cream paper contains snowcapped mountains, pine trees, a lake, and a sun with radiating rays. The words “WILDSTONE SUPPLY” sit above crossed arrows, a small pine tree, and “EST. 2018.”

2007–2018 · North America, Global / networked Hipster Artisanal Revival The trade-mark look of the 2007–2018 craft boom, which dressed new coffee roasters, breweries and stationers as nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century firms. A centred one-ink badge holds a line-drawn icon, crossed arrows or an X with words in its quadrants, a triangle and an 'Est.' date for a firm a year old, in tracked sans capitals and a flowing script on kraft, cream or chalkboard. Stock 'Hipster Badges' made it a template; by 2012–13 trend reports and parodies called it overdone, and by 2018 it had matured into colourless, detailed monoline badges that left the arrows and scripts behind.

More combinations

With DTC 'Blanding'

All 18 combinations with DTC 'Blanding'

With Hipster Artisanal Revival

All 19 combinations with Hipster Artisanal Revival

Every style combination