Style combination · Contrasts
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism × Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
Studio Dumbar also built scenes and photographed them, but filled the set with mismatched type and flat modernist shapes; Hipgnosis kept the lettering off the picture and made the scene look plausible. Choose between a visibly constructed set and a believable impossibility.
Mix them and make something Dutch Expressive Postmodernism Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
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.
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
- Type from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
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Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve avoids experimental & distorted: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Colour from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
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Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve avoids complementary clash: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Form from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
- Composition from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
- Surface from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
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02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
Pop
Inter Tight, standing in for Grotesques sliced, rescaled and layered
Text · Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
The sleeves the London studio Hipgnosis made for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and others from 1968 to 1983. The front is rarely a band portrait or a title: it is a staged photograph of an impossible or deadpan event in a real place, often a pun on the title or a lyric, finished by hand in the darkroom with multiple printing, tinting and cut-and-paste long before Photoshop. George Hardie's crisp pen-and-ink graphics, stickers and inner sleeves carry what lettering there is. Thorgerson carried the idiom on after 1983, as on The Division Bell (1994).
Inter; Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve used Technical pen-and-ink logo and Rubber-stamped title on brown paper
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism, with a counter-accent from Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
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#ffd100ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#e5007eaccent · 18% -
#d8642caccent · 14% -
#e2231aaccent · 10% -
#c9a46baccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ffd100;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #e5007e;
--accent-2: #d8642c;
--accent-3: #e2231a;
--accent-4: #c9a46b;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken): The police logo and vehicle striping and the PTT and film-festival marks are live or protected identities: borrow the method (built sets, mismatched type, deconstructed modernist elements), never reproduce the Politie insignia or striping, which signal real police authority, or present a design as a Studio Dumbar or Hard Werken work.
Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve: The sleeves, their photographs and the Dark Side of the Moon prism are in copyright and the archive is held privately by Aubrey Powell: stage and photograph your own pun rather than recreating a Hipgnosis image, and never present a design as a Hipgnosis, Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin cover. Some sleeves rest on nudity, including two young children on Houses of the Holy, or on jokes Thorgerson himself later called 'not exactly the most politically correct' (Lovedrive) and 'quite sexist' (Technical Ecstasy): borrow the staging and the wit, not those subjects.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
- Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography Contrasts · Its transatlantic contemporary: Katherine McCoy of Cranbrook co-organised the 1986 Chicago show of Dutch design. Cranbrook layers text to be read and argued over; the Dutch studios layer pictures, colour and staged depth to be enjoyed. Choose Cranbrook for theory-laden spreads and the Dutch idiom for posters that must play.
- Memphis Design Pairs well · A contemporary 1980s attack on good taste: set Memphis primitives, squiggles and patterned laminates inside a Dumbar-style photographed set for a poster with real shadows and clashing colour.
- De Stijl Pairs well · Dumbar's forerunner at Teldesign, the Mondriaan poster for the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (1971–72), photographed De Stijl's coloured bars standing in real space like an installation, and his De Stijl poster with Lex van Pieterson (1982) was a staged arrangement of objects, among them a portrait of Rietveld; lift the primaries and bars off the page, build them as a set and photograph it for the Dutch postmodern twist on the movement.
- Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography Contrasts · Basel's rebellion kept the grotesque and the halftone in an abstract grid; the Dutch one brings in figures, props, painting and photographed depth. Choose Basel New Wave for abstract type textures and the Dutch idiom when the poster needs objects and a stage.
- Total Design & Dutch Functionalism Contrasts · The foil it was 'anti' to: Total Design's visible grid, one cool sans and white space against Hard Werken's and Dumbar's mismatched type, crude assemblage and shrieking colour. The same 1986 exhibition set them up as the two poles of Dutch design; quote one exposed grid inside a staged-photo poster to show the argument.
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Hard Werken began as a DIY underground magazine; add punk's photocopied cut-and-paste to the Dutch idiom's offset colour for a rougher, more anti-professional edge.
With Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve
- ECM Sleeve Aesthetic (Munich) Pairs well · Both keep the musicians and most of the type off the front and let one photograph of a wide landscape carry the record; ECM leaves it wintry and still, Hipgnosis puts an absurd event in it. Add ECM's silence and tiny type to a Hipgnosis concept for a quieter, stranger cover.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) Contrasts · The generation that made it look dated: post-punk designers quoted one found image and coded or shrank the type, where Hipgnosis paid for elaborate location shoots and darkroom work. Choose between quoting a picture and staging one.
- Psychedelic Poster Contrasts · Same Pink Floyd scene, opposite answer: Hipgnosis's 1969 Royal Festival Hall poster is still a psychedelic dreamscape collage, but by Atom Heart Mother the band wanted 'something plain' and got a cow. Swap melting hand-lettering and vibrating colour for one calm photograph and almost no type.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · Atom Heart Mother's cow is said to have been inspired by Warhol's cow wallpaper: take pop's deadpan, single everyday subject, photograph it in a real landscape instead of screenprinting it, and let the absence of a title make it strange.
- Surrealist Graphics Contrasts · The parent: Thorgerson said he took from Magritte 'a sort of love of oddity' and of 'juxtaposition or contrariness' (Tate, 2011). The Surrealists built the uncanny from engraving collage, painting and darkroom tricks for magazines and galleries; Hipgnosis staged it as a full-colour location photograph on a mass-market record and played it for a pun. Choose surrealism for dream and desire, Hipgnosis for a deadpan joke that could almost be real.
- PC Music Graphics Contrasts · Both take an idea literally and push it until it turns strange, but Hipgnosis staged it in a real place with a camera, while PC Music renders a synthetic product on a blank field.
- West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow) Pairs well · Hipgnosis also builds impossible scenes for the camera and lets the photograph vouch for them; add Rambow's plain ground and one line of set grotesque when such a staged photo has to work as a street poster rather than a record sleeve.