Stylogeny combining Glitch Art × Vaporwave

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Style combination · Pairs well

Glitch Art × Vaporwave

Vaporwave uses glitch as one surface among busts, grids and pastel 3D; give a vaporwave video a real datamosh between its found clips so the smear comes from the file rather than a plug-in.

From the research on Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics

Mix them and make something Glitch Art Vaporwave

DAYDREAMDAYDREAMDAYDREAMGlitch Art × Vaporwave2001 · 2011
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Glitch Art, their arrangement from Vaporwave, the finish from Glitch Art. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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.

Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics Vaporwave

Type from Vaporwave
Colour from Vaporwave
Form from Glitch Art
Composition from Vaporwave
Surface from Glitch Art

02

The type

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

Display · Vaporwave

Daydream

Syncopate, standing in for Full-width Latin text (ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ)

Text · Glitch Art

An art and design practice that makes digital failure the picture. Artists deliberately corrupt image and video files or short-circuit hardware: they edit a JPEG's bytes (databending), delete a video's keyframes so one shot smears into the next (datamoshing) or sort pixels into streaks. Compression blocks, torn scanlines, shifted colour channels and raw code replace drawing, and the colour comes from the fault. Rosa Menkman and GLI.TC/H framed it as a critique of seamless technology; designers took it onto record sleeves and fonts, music videos onto MTV in 2009, and it became a stock filter.

Space Mono; Glitch Art used Raw file bytes opened as text (databending in a text editor) and Operating-system interface fonts caught in error messages and cascading windows, as in JODI's My%Desktop

03

The colours

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

Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics Vaporwave

  • #1a1040 ground · 36%
  • #fffb96 ink · 14%
  • #01cdfe accent · 18%
  • #ff00ff accent · 14%
  • #05ffa1 accent · 10%
  • #b967ff accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #1a1040;
  --ink: #fffb96;
  --accent-1: #01cdfe;
  --accent-2: #ff00ff;
  --accent-3: #05ffa1;
  --accent-4: #b967ff;
  --font-display: "Syncopate", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Space Mono", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics: Glitch video and animated glitch effects often flicker: keep flashes to three or fewer in any one second, and be stricter with saturated red, to meet WCAG 2.3.1 and protect people with photosensitive epilepsy. Datamoshing and databending usually start from someone else's footage or photographs, so clear the rights before corrupting them for commercial work. When a datamosh or pixel-sort look follows a particular artist's process, credit it; the 2009 music videos overtook the artists who developed the technique.

04

The two styles

A grainy monochrome close-up of a face looking upward is repeated and overlapped beneath dense neon pink, green, cyan and orange digital interference. Large distressed lettering across the top reads “SIGNAL.” 2001–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, North America Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics An art and design practice that makes digital failure the picture. Artists deliberately corrupt image and video files or short-circuit hardware: they edit a JPEG's bytes (databending), delete a video's keyframes so one shot smears into the next (datamoshing) or sort pixels into streaks. Compression blocks, torn scanlines, shifted colour channels and raw code replace drawing, and the colour comes from the fault. Rosa Menkman and GLI.TC/H framed it as a critique of seamless technology; designers took it onto record sleeves and fonts, music videos onto MTV in 2009, and it became a stock filter. A large classical sculpted head rises from a turquoise swimming pool beneath a striped yellow-pink sun, surrounded by palm trees, waterfalls, city buildings and tropical foliage. Floating computer windows, a dolphin, cherry blossoms, a compact disc and a wireframe globe fill the pink-and-purple sky beneath the title “DREAM POOL.” 2011–2017 · Global / networked, North America Vaporwave An internet-born microgenre and visual aesthetic that remixes the debris of late-20th-century consumer culture (Windows 95 dialogs, classical busts, palm trees, mall interiors, Japanese text, early 3D renders) in pastel pinks and cyans. Emerging around 2011 from records by James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Vektroid, it is at once nostalgic homage and deadpan critique of corporate optimism.

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