Style combination · Contrasts

Edo-moji Commercial Lettering × Vyaz

Both are crowded display hands that leave no gap in the band they fill, but edo-moji fills it with plump, heavy strokes, as in Kanteiryū or sumō-ji, and vyaz with tall, interlocked stems and plant filler: two answers to the same demand for a full, dense line, so pick weight or height rather than mixing them.

From the research on Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

Mix them and make something Edo-moji Commercial Lettering Vyaz

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Edo-moji Commercial Lettering, their arrangement from Vyaz, the finish from Edo-moji Commercial Lettering. 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.

Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji) Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

Type from Vyaz: Brush & pen calligraphy
Condensed display
Colour from Edo-moji Commercial Lettering: Monochrome
Flat fields
Form from Edo-moji Commercial Lettering: Rounded & pill
Rectilinear
Composition from Vyaz: Horror vacui
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from Edo-moji Commercial Lettering: Painterly brushwork

The type

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

Display · Vyaz

Grace

Federant, standing in for Drawn Russian Revival vyaz of about 1900, intricate and in the spirit of Art Nouveau, such as Vrubel's monolinear vyaz

Text · Edo-moji Commercial Lettering

The fat, ink-heavy brush hands that Edo's professional sign and bill writers made for the city's entertainments: Kanteiryū for kabuki signboards and playbills from 1779, yose-moji for rakugo halls, sumō-ji for sumo ranking sheets, and squarish kago-moji for votive name slips. The stage and sumo hands swell each stroke until little white is left and pack the columns tight, which theatre writers took as a charm for a full house, so a name reads from far off. Kabuki, rakugo and sumo still write in them.

Newsreader; Edo-moji Commercial Lettering used Kanteiryū (勘亭流, shibai-moji) and Yose-moji (寄席文字)

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Edo-moji Commercial Lettering, with a counter-accent from Vyaz. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji) Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

#f4efe3 ground · 36%
#151311 ink · 14%
#b8312a accent · 18%
#d8c8a0 accent · 14%
#c39a3e accent · 10%
#22324f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4efe3;
  --ink: #151311;
  --accent-1: #b8312a;
  --accent-2: #d8c8a0;
  --accent-3: #c39a3e;
  --accent-4: #22324f;
  --font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}

Use it with care

Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji): These are living professional hands: Kanteiryū is written by kabuki calligraphers, yose-moji is taught by the Tachibana school, and sumō-ji is the trained duty of the Japan Sumo Association's gyōji, so commission or credit those writers instead of passing off a font as their work. Senjafuda are votive slips left at shrines and temples and the banzuke's 蒙御免 is a formula of sumo tradition; do not print real shrine names, performers' names or rankings as decoration, and draw characters with their real meanings rather than as pseudo-Japanese texture.

Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering): Most vyaz carries sacred text: prayers, holy names, the titles of Gospels and service books, and inscriptions on icons, bells, church vessels, shrouds and graves. Do not fill a band with invented pseudo-Cyrillic or scramble real Church Slavonic as texture, keep holy names and prayers off throwaway products, and have any text written or checked by a reader of Church Slavonic. For Old Believers the pre-reform book and its lettering remain a matter of faith, so credit and involve their communities rather than lifting their headings as decoration. Vyaz is not only Russian: Bulgarian and Serbian scribes used it before Russia, Romanian scribes from the 15th century, and western and south-western Rus' in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (today's Belarus and Ukraine, with Supraśl in Poland) kept its own plant-derived manner, so credit the book culture a model comes from. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, check whether your audience will read Old Russian display lettering as Russian state or nationalist branding; vyaz is also part of Belarusian and Ukrainian book and icon heritage, so ask how that audience reads it rather than assuming either.