Style combination · Pairs well

Hand-Painted Signage × Newtro

Newtro's lettering is borrowed from Korean signboards; pair a revived label with real sign-painted shopfronts, as Euljiro's cafés keep their old hardware-store signs.

From the research on Newtro (Korean New-Retro)

Mix them and make something Hand-Painted Signage Newtro

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Newtro, their arrangement from Newtro, the finish from Hand-Painted Signage. 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.

Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Newtro (Korean New-Retro)

Type from Hand-Painted Signage: Hand-lettering
Script
Colour from Newtro: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Newtro: Stylised figuration
Emblems & badges
Composition from Newtro: Central symmetry
Isolated object
Surface from Hand-Painted Signage: Hard offset shadow
Painterly brushwork

The type

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

Display · Hand-Painted Signage

Kin

Yellowtail, standing in for Brush script

Text · Newtro

A South Korean branding trend, named 'Going New-tro' in Seoul National University's Trend Korea 2019 (October 2018), in which heritage firms reissue their own postwar to 1990s labels, trademarks and mascots, polished for young buyers. Jinro's sky-blue bottle and toad label (2019) and Gompyo flour's white bear on beer cans (2020) set the look: centred labels and badges, two or three flat colours on pale grounds, brush, cursive or hand-drawn logotypes, often Hanja with Hangul beside them, and a cartoon mascot as hero. Its source is the recent consumer past, reinterpreted, not reproduced.

Zen Maru Gothic; Newtro used Revived label logotypes in Hanja with Hangul beside them, such as Jinro's Hanja name from its 1970s–80s labels and Daesun soju's cursive lettering from its 1965 launch and Thick brush and hand-drawn Hangul display lettering of postwar Korean packaging and shop signboards

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Newtro, with a counter-accent from Hand-Painted Signage. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Newtro (Korean New-Retro)

#f4ecd8 ground · 36%
#1c1c1c ink · 14%
#f0b929 accent · 18%
#c99a2e accent · 14%
#d7322b accent · 10%
#1f58a8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4ecd8;
  --ink: #1c1c1c;
  --accent-1: #f0b929;
  --accent-2: #c99a2e;
  --accent-3: #d7322b;
  --accent-4: #1f58a8;
  --font-display: "Yellowtail", cursive;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Newtro (Korean New-Retro): Newtro revives a firm's own archive: for any other client draw on that client's history, not Jinro's toad or Gompyo's bear, which their owners guard. In 2023 the first cans of 7Bräu's Daepyo Wheat Beer, which kept Gompyo's colour scheme and a bear, drew Daehan Flour Mills' warning that copying the brand's design could be unfair competition, and 7Bräu promised a redesign with a tiger. Keep Hangul and Hanja correct and legible, and do not swap in Japanese Shōwa-retro or colonial-era 'Gyeongseong' imagery: a 2018 JoongAng Ilbo column called restaurants that mix Japanese food with Gyeongseong nostalgia 'tasteless', since those who lived through the occupation remember it as 'shameful and painful'.

The two styles

An ornate rectangular sign reads “RIVER MARKET” in large cream-and-gold capital letters on a dark green background, with red shadows on the top word and blue shadows below. Gold borders and scrolling flourishes surround the lettering, with red decorative motifs in the black corners and visible painted texture throughout.

1800–present · Global / networked Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Letters painted by trained sign writers on fascias, windows, walls, vehicles and showcards, from Victorian gold leaf on glass to Mexican rótulos, Indian bazaar boards and Ghanaian barbershop signs. Brush-built letters with shading, drop shadows and outlines are fitted to the panel and mixed in a few styles for hierarchy, valuing legibility at a distance and the painter's flourish; vinyl displaced the craft in the 1980s and it has revived since the 2010s.

A smiling cartoon tiger wearing a white cap holds a bottle of milk beneath large blue Korean lettering. Mountains, farms, wheat stalks, flower motifs and a small cow emblem fill an ornate blue, red and cream border.

2017–present · East Asia Newtro (Korean New-Retro) A South Korean branding trend, named 'Going New-tro' in Seoul National University's Trend Korea 2019 (October 2018), in which heritage firms reissue their own postwar to 1990s labels, trademarks and mascots, polished for young buyers. Jinro's sky-blue bottle and toad label (2019) and Gompyo flour's white bear on beer cans (2020) set the look: centred labels and badges, two or three flat colours on pale grounds, brush, cursive or hand-drawn logotypes, often Hanja with Hangul beside them, and a cartoon mascot as hero. Its source is the recent consumer past, reinterpreted, not reproduced.

More combinations

With Hand-Painted Signage

All 29 combinations with Hand-Painted Signage

With Newtro

All 14 combinations with Newtro

Every style combination