Style combination · Contrasts

Frutiger Aero × Solarpunk

Both pair green nature with optimistic technology, but Aero renders it as glossy stock photography, bubbles and glass for a product; choose solarpunk for painted, handmade, lived-in places and shared infrastructure.

From the research on Solarpunk

Mix them and make something Frutiger Aero Solarpunk

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Solarpunk, their arrangement from Solarpunk, the finish from Frutiger Aero. 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.

Frutiger Aero Solarpunk

Type from Frutiger Aero: Humanist sans
Colour from Frutiger Aero: Gradients
Analogous harmony
Form from Solarpunk: Biomorphic curves
Floral & vegetal
Composition from Solarpunk: Illusion of depth
Full bleed
Surface from Frutiger Aero: Gloss & highlights
Frosted glass

Solarpunk avoids gloss & highlights: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

The type

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

Display · Frutiger Aero

Dawn

Fira Sans, standing in for Frutiger (Adrian Frutiger, 1976)

Text · Solarpunk

Hopeful eco-futurist imagery born online. The word dates from a 2008 blog post; the look from an August 2014 Tumblr post by the artist Olivia Louise asking for renewable technology with 'an Art Nouveau veneer'. Sunlit painted vistas, or flat, textured cover illustrations thick with foliage, show cities grown over with gardens, stained-glass solar panels, airships, wind power and shared streets full of people, in natural greens and sky blues warmed by gold. It fills book and magazine covers, concept art and animation as the daylit, communal opposite of cyberpunk's neon night.

Newsreader; Solarpunk used Swash, Art Nouveau-flavoured upper- and lowercase display lettering, as in Solarpunk Magazine's orange masthead and Wide, flared capitals with sun-wheel O's on a translucent title panel over the painting, as on the Sunvault cover

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Frutiger Aero, with a counter-accent from Solarpunk. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Frutiger Aero Solarpunk

#f5fbff ground · 36%
#0b5fa5 ink · 14%
#22c3c9 accent · 18%
#e8b445 accent · 14%
#4fb3e8 accent · 10%
#b8652f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f5fbff;
  --ink: #0b5fa5;
  --accent-1: #22c3c9;
  --accent-2: #e8b445;
  --accent-3: #4fb3e8;
  --accent-4: #b8652f;
  --font-display: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}

Use it with care

Solarpunk: Draw original worlds rather than pastiches of Studio Ghibli films or of living illustrators such as Likhain, Fei Fei Ruan or Stephen Lillie, and do not prompt an image model with their names. Do not use the look to greenwash: Adam Flynn calls luxury condos with a green roof that price out existing communities 'fake Solarpunk urbanism', so show shared, affordable infrastructure and ordinary people. When a scene borrows architecture, dress or symbols from a specific culture (Afrofuturist, Indigenous or other), keep their meanings and credit their makers.

The two styles

2004–2013 · Global / networked Frutiger Aero The glossy, optimistic look of consumer technology from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, retrospectively named in 2017 by the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute after Windows Vista's Aero interface and Adrian Frutiger's humanist sans. Translucent glass panels, glossy orbs and buttons, water droplets, bubbles, auroras, green fields and blue skies fused technology with clean nature, set in airy humanist sans-serifs.

An ornate illustrated poster reads “BRIGHTER TOGETHER” above a sunlit, plant-covered city with glasshouses, bridges, waterfalls, wind turbines and sailboats on a canal. In the foreground, a woman tends flowers beside a man, a child and a cat, with flowering vines framing the scene.

2014–present · Global / networked, North America, Latin America & Caribbean Solarpunk Hopeful eco-futurist imagery born online. The word dates from a 2008 blog post; the look from an August 2014 Tumblr post by the artist Olivia Louise asking for renewable technology with 'an Art Nouveau veneer'. Sunlit painted vistas, or flat, textured cover illustrations thick with foliage, show cities grown over with gardens, stained-glass solar panels, airships, wind power and shared streets full of people, in natural greens and sky blues warmed by gold. It fills book and magazine covers, concept art and animation as the daylit, communal opposite of cyberpunk's neon night.

More combinations

With Frutiger Aero

All 13 combinations with Frutiger Aero

With Solarpunk

All 10 combinations with Solarpunk

Every style combination