Stylogeny combining Dutch Expressive Postmodernism × Memphis Design

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Style combination · Pairs well

Dutch Expressive Postmodernism × Memphis Design

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.

From the research on Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken)

Mix them and make something Dutch Expressive Postmodernism Memphis Design

PopDutch Expressive × Memphis Design1977 · 1981
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Memphis Design, their arrangement from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism, the finish from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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) Memphis Design

Type from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
Colour from Memphis Design
Form from Memphis Design
Composition from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
Surface from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism

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 · 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 Memphis Design, with a counter-accent from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) Memphis Design

  • #ffd23f ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #ff5a36 accent · 18%
  • #e5007e accent · 14%
  • #2ec4b6 accent · 10%
  • #e2231a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffd23f;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #ff5a36;
  --accent-2: #e5007e;
  --accent-3: #2ec4b6;
  --accent-4: #e2231a;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", 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.

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The two styles

Oversized cutout letters spell “NOISE PARADE” above a colourful, distressed collage of a shouting face, a megaphone, concrete buildings, and people on stairs. Bright geometric shapes, stripes, and checkerboard fragments overlap the black-and-white photographic imagery. 1977–1994 · Western Europe Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) An anti-functionalist current in Dutch graphic design led by Studio Dumbar in The Hague (from 1977) and the Rotterdam collective Hard Werken (magazine from 1979, design office 1982–1994). Turning against the sober grids of Total Design, they used typography as illustration, mismatched and cut-up typefaces, crude assemblage and shrieking colour. Dumbar added staged photographs of built sets that play with depth. The idiom also reached public clients, in the PTT (1989) and police (1993) identities. 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.

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