Style combination · Contrasts

Global Village Coffeehouse × Memphis Design

Its predecessor and foil: Collins describes designers leaving clean Memphis forms and bright colours for earth tones, woodcut line and rough paper, so set the two side by side to show the turn from 1980s excess to 1990s earnestness.

From the research on Global Village Coffeehouse

Mix them and make something Global Village Coffeehouse Memphis Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Memphis Design, their arrangement from Global Village Coffeehouse, the finish from Global Village Coffeehouse. 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.

Global Village Coffeehouse Memphis Design

Type from Global Village Coffeehouse: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Memphis Design: Complementary clash
Full polychrome

Global Village Coffeehouse avoids complementary clash: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Form from Memphis Design: Geometric primitives
Squiggles & confetti
Composition from Global Village Coffeehouse: Isolated object
Framed panels
Surface from Global Village Coffeehouse: Carved line
Painterly brushwork

The type

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

Display · Global Village Coffeehouse

Yay!

Jost, standing in for Neo-hieroglyphic and pictograph dingbat and display fonts from 1990s font packs, which Collins reads as a bid for a more 'universal language' (Are.na, 2018)

Text · Global Village Coffeehouse

The faux-naive, earth-toned illustration style that late-1980s American designers set against Memphis, and that chain cafés, bookstores, packaging and clip art spread through the 1990s. Rough woodcut- and scratchboard-like line shows suns and moons, spirals, hands, eyes, globes, ships, flowing figures and coffee cups with 'aroma swirls' over mottled earth-toned grounds. Trading Memphis brights and metallic foil for textured paper and twine, it sold handmade warmth and 'global village' unity. The name arose in CARI's online group in 2017; Evan Collins set the style out in a 2018 Are.na essay.

Jost; Global Village Coffeehouse used Mondõ Kaizen (Don Synstelien, SynFonts; on MyFonts since 2001), the font Evan Collins links from his phrase 'countless 1990s font packs' in the passage on neo-hieroglyphics (Are.na, 2018) and Neo-hieroglyphic and pictograph dingbat and display fonts from 1990s font packs, which Collins reads as a bid for a more 'universal language' (Are.na, 2018)

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Memphis Design, with a counter-accent from Global Village Coffeehouse. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Global Village Coffeehouse Memphis Design

#ffd23f ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#ff5a36 accent · 18%
#d19a35 accent · 14%
#2ec4b6 accent · 10%
#b4532a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffd23f;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #ff5a36;
  --accent-2: #d19a35;
  --accent-3: #2ec4b6;
  --accent-4: #b4532a;
  --font-display: "Jost", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Global Village Coffeehouse: The style borrowed ancient and Indigenous imagery as generic primitivism: Collins records kokopelli figures and 'tribal' and hieroglyph-like icons, at times showing 'tribal' figures carrying executives or serving coffee, and Dwell notes vaguely African masks on café walls; kokopelli is a fertility deity of the Hopi, Zuni and other Southwestern peoples. Draw suns, spirals, cups, plants and invented figures instead, leave out kokopelli, masks and other specific peoples' sacred figures, and never show non-Western people as servants or as an exotic backdrop for a product.