Style combination · Contrasts
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism × Swiss Punk
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.
Mix them and make something Dutch Expressive Postmodernism Swiss Punk
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) Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography
- Type from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
- Colour from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
- Form from Swiss Punk
- Composition from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
- Surface from Swiss Punk
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Dutch Expressive Postmodernism
Hello
Inter Tight, standing in for Grotesques sliced, rescaled and layered
Text · Swiss Punk
A rebellion from inside the Swiss school: Wolfgang Weingart and his Basel students kept the grotesque and the grid but set them in motion with extreme letterspacing, stepped and angled lines, rules and bars, enlarged halftone screens and layered film montage. Carried to the US by April Greiman, Dan Friedman and others, it became an intuitive, textured counterpoint to corporate modernism and a bridge to digital postmodern typography.
Inter; Swiss Punk used Akzidenz-Grotesk and Univers
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Dutch Expressive Postmodernism, with a counter-accent from Swiss Punk. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken) Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography
-
#ffd100ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#e5007eaccent · 18% -
#e2231aaccent · 14% -
#0098d8accent · 10% -
#00965eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ffd100;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #e5007e;
--accent-2: #e2231a;
--accent-3: #0098d8;
--accent-4: #00965e;
--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.
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.
- 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.
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Contrasts · 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.
With Swiss Punk
- Memphis Design Pairs well · Add Memphis squiggles and pastel triangles to New Wave's floating bars for the full 1980s postmodern palette.
- Neo-Swiss Revival Pairs well · Borrow New Wave's letterspacing and stepped lines to make a contemporary neo-Swiss grid feel alive.
- Renaissance Book Typography Contrasts · Classical centred book typography is the calm foil to New Wave's stepped, letterspaced lines.
- British Style Press (The Face, i-D and Arena) Pairs well · Both took modernism apart in the 1980s: add Weingart's layered, tracked grotesques to a Brody spread for a more Swiss, less drawn result.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) Contrasts · Both took modernism apart in the same years: Weingart's Basel school layered type and broke the grid, while post-punk sleeves quoted one borrowed image and withheld the type; choose between layering and withholding.