Style combination · Contrasts
Emblem Book × European Heraldry
Alciato's book opens with the arms of the Duchy of Milan, but a coat of arms identifies a bearer by the rules of blazon, while an emblem is a freely invented moral riddle that needs its motto and verse; use arms to identify and an emblem to argue.
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.
Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram) European Heraldry
- Type from Emblem Book
- Colour from European Heraldry
- Form from European Heraldry
- Composition from Emblem Book
- Surface from Emblem Book
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Emblem Book
Atlas
Cinzel, standing in for Letterspaced roman capitals for the mottoes of Steyner's 1531 Augsburg edition, as 'REVERENTIAM IN MATRIMONIO REQVIRI', broken over two centred lines above the woodcut, with the couplets in italic below, alternate lines indented
Text · European Heraldry
The hereditary identifying devices of medieval Europe's knights and seals, codified into a rule-bound grammar still used by states, cities, churches, universities and families. A coat of arms is defined by its written blazon, not by a drawing: a few flat tinctures (two metals, five colours and the furs) that keep metal off metal and colour off colour, a shield divided by bold ordinaries, and stylised charges in fixed poses, redrawn by every age in its own idiom and combined by impalement and quartering.
Libre Caslon Text; European Heraldry used Gothic book and cursive hands naming the bearer above or beside each shield in medieval rolls of arms and armorials, as 'die coninc van denmarke' beside the Danish flag in the Gelre Armorial and Mottoes lettered on a scroll beneath the shield
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from European Heraldry, with a counter-accent from Emblem Book. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram) European Heraldry
-
#f4f1e8ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#e8b923accent · 18% -
#8a6a45accent · 14% -
#b5121baccent · 10% -
#c9b48faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f1e8;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #e8b923;
--accent-2: #8a6a45;
--accent-3: #b5121b;
--accent-4: #c9b48f;
--font-display: "Cinzel", serif;
--font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}Use it with care
European Heraldry: A coat of arms belongs to a particular bearer, lineage or (in Polish heraldry) clan, not to everyone with a surname: in Scotland it can belong to only one person at a time and the Court of the Lord Lyon can fine those who usurp arms and have the offending items removed or destroyed, state arms are protected against unauthorised registration and use as trademarks under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention, and many European cities and universities protect their arms as trademarks. Design new arms by the rules of the tradition rather than copying a real family's, city's or state's arms for decoration or branding, and do not present invented arms as a family's historic coat of arms. Crusader and Templar shields and knights with crosses on their chests or shields have also become far-right insignia (Charlottesville 2017, the US Capitol 2021), and neo-Nazis use an eagle loosely based on German coats of arms, though not every eagle derives from it; check how a cross, an eagle or a crusading knight will read before using it, and avoid pairing them with militant or ethnic-nationalist themes.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Emblem Book
- Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Contrasts · Both centre a framed picture over a block of text, but the Épinal sheet tells a popular story in stencil colour for a broad public, while the emblem is a learned monochrome riddle, one to a page, read slowly in sequence.
- Renaissance Book Typography Contrasts · Its parent shares the humanist roman and italic, the paper and the woodcut, but lets text carry the page with ornament at its edges; the emblem book puts a framed picture at the centre of every page and makes it part of the argument.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Both find meaning in the gap between a picture and the words beside it; pair a framed, uncanny object with a terse motto above and a short verse below for an editorial series that asks to be decoded.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · The emblem's motto-plus-sign unit already works like a mark with a tagline; reduce its allegorical picture to one flat, repeatable sign with corporate modernism's discipline and keep the motto as the line beneath it.
- Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards Contrasts · The emblem book explains its picture with a printed motto and epigram on the page, while the tarot gives only a carved title and a numeral and leaves the meaning to play or reading; choose the emblem book when the text must carry the argument.
With European Heraldry
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · The craft badge borrows heraldry's air of lineage with an 'Est.' date and crossed arrows on kraft paper, while a real coat of arms is a granted or inherited, blazoned identity in strong tinctures; set the two side by side to show the difference between quoting heritage and holding it.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · A coat of arms already is an identity defined by a specification rather than one drawing, applied to seals, banners, buildings and documents; Finnish municipal arms of the 1950s show how its flat two-tincture discipline reads as a modern mark, so use blazon-like rules to write a logo that can be redrawn without losing itself.
- Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Tradition Pairs well · Medieval armorials name their shields in Gothic hands and German heraldic artists such as Otto Hupp also drew Fraktur; pair a flat Gothic shield with a blackletter name or motto for a certificate, diploma or civic document, checking how the broken script will read politically.
- Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Contrasts · Both are hereditary emblem systems that began in the twelfth century and mark kinship by small codified variations, but a mon is a single-colour silhouette drawn round a centre while a coat of arms is a shield of contrasting tinctures read by the rule of tincture; compare them to choose between a one-ink crest and a coloured, partitioned one.
- Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo) Contrasts · Both raise colours and emblems over a fighting company, but heraldry codifies one bearer's arms by rule, while a curva borrows the city's arms, a skull or a film villain for one afternoon and paints it the size of a stand; choose between a fixed blazon and a crowd-made, temporary emblem.
- Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards Pairs well · The Emperor's and Empress's eagle shields and the maker's escutcheon on the 2 of Coupes come from armory; pair heraldic tinctures and charges with a tarot figure for a crest-like card or label.
- Natural Wine Label Art Contrasts · The crest is the device of the classic château label that natural wine replaced with a face or an animal; put one heraldic charge beside a doodle to show which side of the wine world a bottle stands on.
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Contrasts · Both mark a sovereign's identity and authority, but heraldry does it with charges and tinctures on a shield and the tughra with the ruler's name alone; compare them to decide whether an identity should be pictured or written.