Stylogeny combining Early Web Vernacular × Flash Vector Cartoon

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Style combination · Pairs well

Early Web Vernacular × Flash Vector Cartoon

Its native habitat: put the cartoon in a cluttered portal page of banners and visitor counters for the full dial-up context.

From the research on Flash Vector Cartoon (Newgrounds-Era Web Animation)

Mix them and make something Early Web Vernacular Flash Vector Cartoon

PopEarly Web Vernacular × Flash Vector Cartoon
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Flash Vector Cartoon, their arrangement from Flash Vector Cartoon, the finish from Early Web Vernacular. 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.

Early Web Vernacular Flash Vector Cartoon (Newgrounds-Era Web Animation)

Type from Early Web Vernacular
Colour from Early Web Vernacular
Form from Flash Vector Cartoon
Composition from Flash Vector Cartoon
Surface from Early Web Vernacular

Flash Vector Cartoon avoids grain & noise: this is where the two pull against each other.

02

The type

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

Display · Early Web Vernacular

Pop

Newsreader, standing in for Times New Roman (browser default)

Text · Flash Vector Cartoon

Short cartoons drawn and animated in Macromedia Flash for the browser and passed around portals such as Newgrounds. Characters are closed vector shapes with flat colour fills and an even stroke, stored as reusable symbols and moved by computer tweening like cut-out puppets, with looping walk cycles and a few mouth shapes. The tone is absurd, ironic or cute-gory, often interactive. By 2002 it was on television (Home Movies, then ¡Mucha Lucha! on US children's TV). Its portal heyday ran to about 2010, and it faded once Flash Player was retired at the end of 2020.

Zen Maru Gothic; Flash Vector Cartoon used Hand-drawn vector title lettering made with Flash's own pen and brush tools and animated with the cartoon, as on title cards and series logos and Embedded TrueType display faces rendered smooth by the Flash Player

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Early Web Vernacular, with a counter-accent from Flash Vector Cartoon. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Early Web Vernacular Flash Vector Cartoon (Newgrounds-Era Web Animation)

  • #000080 ground · 36%
  • #00ff00 ink · 14%
  • #0000ff accent · 18%
  • #ff3333 accent · 14%
  • #ff00ff accent · 10%
  • #66cc33 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #000080;
  --ink: #00ff00;
  --accent-1: #0000ff;
  --accent-2: #ff3333;
  --accent-3: #ff00ff;
  --accent-4: #66cc33;
  --font-display: "Newsreader", serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

A densely decorated blue ocean-themed webpage features the title “OCEAN DREAMS” above a pearl-and-shell-framed picture of dolphins. Repeated dolphins, glittering stars, hearts, planets, kittens, fairies, fish and small novelty icons fill the surrounding space. 1994–2004 · Global / networked Early Web Vernacular The amateur web of the mid-1990s to early 2000s, when millions of people hand-coded personal homepages on free hosts such as GeoCities with table layouts, browser-default fonts, tiled backgrounds, animated GIFs, MIDI soundtracks, hit counters and ‘under construction’ signs. Its look came from HTML's limits, slow modems and enthusiastic bricolage rather than professional design; Olia Lialina later named it ‘a vernacular web’. A brightly coloured comic shows a spiky-haired child taking a giant chocolate-chip cookie from a jar and running away while an angry chef chases him. A large final panel shows the child fleeing with a bitten cookie above the words “COOKIE RUN.” 1997–2020 · North America, Western Europe, East Asia, Global / networked Flash Vector Cartoon (Newgrounds-Era Web Animation) Short cartoons drawn and animated in Macromedia Flash for the browser and passed around portals such as Newgrounds. Characters are closed vector shapes with flat colour fills and an even stroke, stored as reusable symbols and moved by computer tweening like cut-out puppets, with looping walk cycles and a few mouth shapes. The tone is absurd, ironic or cute-gory, often interactive. By 2002 it was on television (Home Movies, then ¡Mucha Lucha! on US children's TV). Its portal heyday ran to about 2010, and it faded once Flash Player was retired at the end of 2020.

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More combinations

With Early Web Vernacular

All 10 combinations with Early Web Vernacular

With Flash Vector Cartoon

Every style combination