Style combination · Contrasts

Finnish Bold Print × Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration

Nordic flat, abstract repeat printing of the 1950s against this tonal, figurative forest; set a single troll silhouette into a bold flat field to bridge them.

From the research on Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration (Werenskiold, Kittelsen, Bauer)

Mix them and make something Finnish Bold Print Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration, their arrangement from Finnish Bold Print, the finish from Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration. 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.

Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism) Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration (Werenskiold, Kittelsen, Bauer)

Type from Finnish Bold Print
Colour from Finnish Bold Print: Flat fields
Limited spot colours

Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration avoids flat fields: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Form from Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration: Naturalistic depiction
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Finnish Bold Print: All-over field
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration: Painterly brushwork
Carved line

The type

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

Display · Finnish Bold Print

Hello

Inter Tight; Finnish Bold Print used The Marimekko wordmark (in use since 1954) and Selvedge inscriptions repeated along the edge of the cloth, naming designer, pattern, maker, country and year

Text · Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration

Norwegian and Swedish folk-tale illustration in which trolls, nøkken and huldra live in a real, observed northern landscape of forest, mountain, bog and farm. Werenskiold invented the forest troll type for Asbjørnsen and Moe in 1879, Kittelsen made it grow out of rock, root and water in hatched pen and wash, and Bauer, in muted watercolour plates for Bland tomtar och troll, set small, still princesses among towering firs and lumbering trolls.

EB Garamond; Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration used Fraktur text and caption type in the Copenhagen Eventyrbog for Børn (1883–87), e.g. the caption '„Hutetu!" sagde Troldet. Tegning af E. Werenskiold.' under a full-page drawing in vol. 2 (1884) and Ornamented fantasy display lettering in red on a gilt panel, with nisser (gnomes), a cat and a porridge pot above it, on the publisher's binding of Eventyrbog for Børn vol. 1 (1883), drawn by Gotfred Albert Hartvig and engraved by J. C. S. Danielsen

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Finnish Bold Print, with a counter-accent from Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism) Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration (Werenskiold, Kittelsen, Bauer)

#f7f5f0 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#ef7d1a accent · 18%
#c4a04e accent · 14%
#d4211c accent · 10%
#6b5238 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f7f5f0;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #ef7d1a;
  --accent-2: #c4a04e;
  --accent-3: #d4211c;
  --accent-4: #6b5238;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

Use it with care

Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism): Many of the best-known patterns, Unikko and Kivet among them, are still produced by Marimekko and remain protected designs, so work in the manner rather than copying them. Folk sources carry two further, separate risks. Anonymous folk ornament can be living devotional material: the käspaikka, the Karelian linen towel named in Isola's 1959 print, is still used to dress icons in Orthodox churches and homes, so abstract such ornament rather than quote it, and keep it out of contexts that trivialise it. A named folk artist's work is authored, not a shared tradition: in 2013 Kristina Isola admitted that her 'Metsänväki' (2007), by then painted on a Finnair aircraft, copied elements of Maria Prymachenko's 1963 painting 'Rat on a Journey'; Finnair undertook to repaint the plane and Marimekko ended its collaboration with Kristina Isola in September 2013.

Nordic Fairy-Tale and Troll Illustration (Werenskiold, Kittelsen, Bauer): Bauer took bent knives, shoes, spears, pots and belts from his 1904 sketches of Sámi life and made them part of his trolls' clothes and ornament: do not dress trolls or other monsters in Sámi gáktis, duodji or tools, or cast the Sámi, a living Indigenous people, as fairy-tale creatures of the northern wilderness. Kittelsen's pictures have also been reused by Norwegian black metal, including on Filosofem by Varg Vikernes, a neo-Nazi, so keep this imagery away from ethnic-nationalist and 'pure North' framings.