Style combination · Pairs well
Emblem Book × Surrealist Graphics
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.
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) Surrealist Graphics
- Type from Emblem Book
- Colour from Emblem Book
- Form from Surrealist Graphics
- Composition from Surrealist Graphics
- 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
Amour
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 · Surrealist Graphics
Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious. Its graphic legacy (uncanny collage from old engravings, solarised and cameraless photographs, impossible juxtapositions painted with illusionistic precision) passed through magazines like Minotaure into fashion, advertising and book design on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bodoni Moda; Surrealist Graphics used Artists' hand-lettered mastheads and Didone and Victorian display faces lifted from 19th-century catalogues
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Emblem Book, with a counter-accent from Surrealist Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram) Surrealist Graphics
-
#f2ead7ground · 36% -
#1a1714ink · 14% -
#8a6a45accent · 18% -
#a24a2aaccent · 14% -
#c9b48faccent · 10% -
#6f8fb5accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2ead7;
--ink: #1a1714;
--accent-1: #8a6a45;
--accent-2: #a24a2a;
--accent-3: #c9b48f;
--accent-4: #6f8fb5;
--font-display: "Cinzel", serif;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}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.
- 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.
- European Heraldry Contrasts · 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.
- 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 Surrealist Graphics
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Place a single dream image inside a strict corporate grid; the calm system heightens the strangeness.
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics Contrasts · Isotype's one-symbol-one-meaning is the antithesis of Surrealist ambiguity; decide whether the viewer should decode or be disturbed.
- Psychedelic Poster Pairs well · Psychedelic posters revived Surrealist dream imagery; combine them for hallucinatory figurative work with melting forms.
- Polish Poster School Pairs well · Polish poster artists fused Surrealist metaphor with painterly lettering; borrow the method for cultural posters built on one uncanny image.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) Pairs well · Vaughan Oliver drew on Dalí and Surrealism; add an uncanny juxtaposition to a blurred, textured 23 Envelope photograph for a dream-like sleeve.
- Brodovitch Editorial Design (Harper's Bazaar) Pairs well · Take its isolated body parts, torn edges and dreamlike juxtaposition, but apply them to the photographic spread.
- AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Pairs well · Surrealist photography also makes the impossible look photographed; take its dream logic when a brief needs strangeness, and add the AIZ headline and caption when that strangeness has to land a political point.
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) Pairs well · Both paint ordinary things with illusionistic precision until they look strange; borrow a Magritte-like juxtaposition to push a Basel still life from product portrait to visual riddle, as Leupin did with his newspaper and globe.