Garo and Heta-uma × Superflat

Later Japanese flat, naive-looking art that borrows the same wilful lack of polish with a glossier surface.

From the research on Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration)

Mix them and make something Garo and Heta-uma Superflat

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Garo and Heta-uma, their arrangement from Superflat, the finish from Garo and Heta-uma. 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.

Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration) Superflat

Type from Garo and Heta-uma: Hand-lettering
Colour from Superflat: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Garo and Heta-uma: Distortion & exaggeration
Stylised figuration
Composition from Superflat: All-over field
Central symmetry
Surface from Garo and Heta-uma: Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · Garo and Heta-uma

Fine

Londrina Solid; Garo and Heta-uma used Uneven hand-drawn katakana and hiragana lettering inside the drawing and Hand-lettered Garo titles and credits in brush and pen

Text · Superflat

The flat, saturated, cartoon-crowded look that Takashi Murakami named in his exhibition and manifesto Superflat (Tokyo, 2000; US tour 2001). It draws a line from Edo painting and prints to postwar anime and manga, and flattens high and low, art and merchandise into one plane. Smiling flowers, many-eyed characters and anime figures come in unshaded polychrome, smooth and glossy, cute and grotesque at once, sold as handbags and album covers as well as paintings. This entry follows the drawn core of Murakami and his Kaikai Kiki circle; the shows also held photography, video and sculpture.

Zen Maru Gothic; Superflat used Letters drawn into the character and Many-coloured repeated monogram

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Superflat, with a counter-accent from Garo and Heta-uma. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Garo and Heta-uma (Japanese Underground Manga and 'Bad-Good' Illustration) Superflat

#fbfaf5 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#ffd900 accent · 18%
#d8392b accent · 14%
#00a0e9 accent · 10%
#8a8478 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbfaf5;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #ffd900;
  --accent-2: #d8392b;
  --accent-3: #00a0e9;
  --accent-4: #8a8478;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Superflat: Some canonical works use explicit otaku sexual imagery, such as Murakami's My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), and associated artists engage with lolicon art: Mr. describes himself as a lolicon and Henmaru Machino parodies it; never sexualise childlike figures. The mushroom-cloud skulls of Murakami's Time Bokan works and the title Little Boy, the name of the Hiroshima bomb, refer to the atomic bombings, and critics such as Dong-Yeon Koh argue that this victim narrative obscures Japanese aggression in China and Korea; do not use mushroom clouds or skulls as cute decoration. Handle borrowed Buddhist iconography and phrases, such as Kannon, with respect, and draw original characters and flowers: Mr. DOB, the smiling flowers and the Louis Vuitton monogram are owned designs.