Style combination · Contrasts
Emigre × Phototype Expressive Typography
Both were made by a new type technology; Emigre's bitmap and PostScript faces end the phototype era, so set a Lubalin ligature against a coarse bitmap word to show how the tool shapes the letter.
Mix them and make something Emigre Phototype Expressive Typography
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.
Emigre & Early Digital Type Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)
- Type from Emigre
- Colour from Phototype Expressive Typography
- Form from Emigre
- Composition from Phototype Expressive Typography
-
Emigre avoids central symmetry: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Surface from Emigre
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Phototype Expressive Typography
The display typography of the phototype era, led in New York by Herb Lubalin, his lettering partners John Pistilli, Tom Carnase and Tony DiSpigna, and the International Typeface Corporation. Film freed display letters from the metal body, so they are kerned until they touch, overlap or fuse into ligatures, swashes and logotypes, and words are redrawn to show what they mean. Aaron Burns called it 'typographics'. It runs from Ralph Ginzburg's Eros, Fact and Avant Garde to ITC's tabloid U&lc.
Zilla Slab; Phototype Expressive Typography used ITC Avant Garde Gothic and ITC Lubalin Graph
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Phototype Expressive Typography, with a counter-accent from Emigre. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Emigre & Early Digital Type Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)
-
#f8f6f1ground · 39% -
#111111ink · 15% -
#d1322baccent · 20% -
#8a8479accent · 15% -
#2b59c3accent · 11%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f8f6f1;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #d1322b;
--accent-2: #8a8479;
--accent-3: #2b59c3;
--font-display: "Workbench", monospace;
--font-text: "Zilla Slab", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Emigre
- Out-of-Square Hangul Typography Pairs well · Ahn Sang-soo's Bogoseo/Bogoseo ran a parallel 1980s magazine experiment with a constructed alphabet; set an Emigre face beside out-of-square Hangul for a bilingual experimental spread.
- Neo-Swiss Revival Contrasts · Neo-Swiss restraint is the foil to Emigre's typographic overload; one Emigre display face in a neo-Swiss layout adds personality.
- Bitmap & Pixel Graphics Pairs well · Combine Emigre's bitmap faces with early-Mac pixel icons for an authentic mid-1980s desktop look.
- Early Web Vernacular Pairs well · Low-resolution type and layered layouts carry naturally into table-based web pages and GIF graphics.
- Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type) Pairs well · Both are type-led laboratories that publish their own magazine as a showcase for their fonts. In Zone Mixte (2022) êkhô studio chose BBB Baskervvol with Baskerville's erasure of Sarah Eaves in mind, the story Zuzana Licko honoured in Mrs Eaves (1996); set a Baskervvol text in an Emigre-style specimen spread to join the two foundry experiments.
- South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi) Contrasts · Ijusi's Typografika issues answered the 1990s experimental-font culture (Walker's Red Mercury pays tribute to Jonathan Barnbrook, whose early faces Emigre released), but drew their letters from Durban's shopfront hoardings, funeral parlours, beadwork and wire craft rather than from the screen; use Emigre for the digital edge and Ijusi for a sense of place.
- Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography Pairs well · Emigre published Cranbrook work; set layered Cranbrook-style spreads in Emigre's early digital typefaces.
With Phototype Expressive Typography
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · Both pair a script with a geometric sans, but the craft badge tracks its capitals wide in a centred one-ink frame, while Lubalin kerns the same pairing until the letters touch and join. Set one against the other to decide whether the letters should breathe or fuse.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revives old styles through drawn figures and Lubalin through the letters themselves; pair a Push Pin illustration with a swash, tightly kerned Lubalin headline for full 1970s New York warmth.
- Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism Pairs well · Same New York years and the same belief that the title can be the picture; give a Miles-style tinted photograph a Lubalin logotype whose letters touch and interlock instead of a plain blown-up grotesque.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Even spacing, flush-left grotesque and a grid against letters squeezed until they fuse into one centred logotype: put the two side by side to decide whether type should stay neutral or carry the joke.
- Di Tella Graphic Design (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella) Pairs well · Both made the word the picture in the same years; add Lubalin's tight, playful letter-joins to Di Tella's blunt flat-ink title for a headline-led identity.
- Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type) Contrasts · Both make new meaning by interlocking letters into ligatures, but Lubalin's phototype ligatures are tight-set display wit for headlines and logotypes, while post-binary ligatures carry gender inside the word, in running French text as well as on banners; choose Lubalin for a witty headline, post-binary glyphs when the grammar of the word is the message.
- Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Contrasts · Same New York years and the same habit of locking letters together until they touch, but Lubalin kerned polished phototype for advertising while Maciunas pressed leftover dry-transfer letters into puzzle monograms on kraft; choose between the commercial ligature and the scavenged one.
- Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering) Pairs well · Lubalin's phototype logotypes also merge neighbouring letters into ligatures and crowd them into a single shape; borrow vyaz's shared stems and nested small letters for a Cyrillic logotype, and keep it to one or two words so it stays readable.