Style combination · Pairs well

Greek Tourism Modernism × Japanese Postwar Modernism

Both set one national emblem on a flat field of colour; borrow Kamekura's geometric sun disc and charged emptiness to tighten a Greek heritage motif into a modern mark.

From the research on Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)

Mix them and make something Greek Tourism Modernism Japanese Postwar Modernism

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Japanese Postwar Modernism, their arrangement from Greek Tourism Modernism, the finish from Greek Tourism Modernism. 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.

Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT) Japanese Postwar Modernism

Type from Japanese Postwar Modernism: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Rotated & vertical setting
Colour from Greek Tourism Modernism: Flat fields
Limited spot colours
Form from Japanese Postwar Modernism: Geometric primitives
Stylised figuration
Composition from Greek Tourism Modernism: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from Greek Tourism Modernism: Flat

The type

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

Display · Japanese Postwar Modernism

Calm

Zen Kaku Gothic New, standing in for Gothic (kaku gothic Japanese sans)

Text · Greek Tourism Modernism

The modernist image of Greece made for the National Tourism Organisation (EOT) by Michalis Katzourakis, its art adviser in 1960-1967, and by Frederick Carabott, who advised it until 1967; in 1962 the two also founded the K&K Athens Advertising Centre. A poster sets one Hellenic sign (a photographed relief, vase or statue, a Byzantine dome) on flat saturated colour or, full-bleed, a mosaic or a woven ship, under the country's name, often one lowercase word in bold sans: grèce, greece. After 1967 photography gradually took over, but other designers kept the manner going at EOT under the junta.

Inter; Greek Tourism Modernism used Bold sans-serif in lowercase, geometric or grotesque, for the one-word country name (grèce, greece, griechenland), most often on the EOT posters of 1960-1963, and still on 'athens festival' in 1974 and Widely spaced roman serif capitals

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Greek Tourism Modernism, with a counter-accent from Japanese Postwar Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT) Japanese Postwar Modernism

#141414 ground · 36%
#f3efe6 ink · 14%
#f2c230 accent · 18%
#d7261e accent · 14%
#e8812a accent · 10%
#c8a24a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #141414;
  --ink: #f3efe6;
  --accent-1: #f2c230;
  --accent-2: #d7261e;
  --accent-3: #e8812a;
  --accent-4: #c8a24a;
  --font-display: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT): Many of these posters picture Byzantine churches and monasteries, such as Mystras and island chapels, that remain active Orthodox sacred places, and borrow woven and mosaic motifs from living regional crafts: use them with that weight, not as interchangeable 'Greek' decoration. The style is also a state nation-branding image made for foreign visitors, and other designers went on making EOT posters in this manner, beside colour photography, under the 1967-1974 military dictatorship, so do not present its sunlit antiquity as a neutral picture of Greece. Commercial reuse of photographs of Greek monuments and museum antiquities also needs permission from, and a fee to, the Greek state (Law 4858/2021, article 46), so clear any statue, relief or site photograph before using it in new work.

The two styles

1960–1974 · Southern Europe Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT) The modernist image of Greece made for the National Tourism Organisation (EOT) by Michalis Katzourakis, its art adviser in 1960-1967, and by Frederick Carabott, who advised it until 1967; in 1962 the two also founded the K&K Athens Advertising Centre. A poster sets one Hellenic sign (a photographed relief, vase or statue, a Byzantine dome) on flat saturated colour or, full-bleed, a mosaic or a woven ship, under the country's name, often one lowercase word in bold sans: grèce, greece. After 1967 photography gradually took over, but other designers kept the manner going at EOT under the junta.

A large red sun sits above and behind a black triangular mountain with a gold tip on an off-white background. Bold black characters reading “太陽” appear in the upper-left corner.

1950–1990 · East Asia Japanese Postwar Modernism Building on the New Typography that Hiromu Hara and the Nippon Kobo circle had absorbed in the 1930s, Japan's postwar graphic designers fused the grid, sans-serif and objective photography of European modernism with indigenous traditions of family crests (kamon), asymmetry and charged emptiness (ma). From the Graphic '55 exhibition and the Nippon Design Center to Yusaku Kamekura's Tokyo 1964 Olympic posters, it produced bold emblematic symbols, luminous flat colour fields and photography of startling precision.