Style combination · Contrasts
Hauntology × Hipster Artisanal Revival
Both fake an old firm, but the hipster badge revives Victorian craft for warmth and trust, while hauntology revives a post-war public institution so that it feels slightly wrong.
Mix them and make something Hauntology Hipster Artisanal Revival
01
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.
Hauntology & Ghost Box Design Hipster Artisanal Revival
- Type from Hipster Artisanal Revival
- Colour from Hauntology
- Form from Hipster Artisanal Revival
- Composition from Hipster Artisanal Revival
- Surface from Hauntology
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Hipster Artisanal Revival
Again
Jost, standing in for Futura (Paul Renner, Bauer, 1927), as on the Field Notes cover
Text · Hauntology
Sleeves and print that rebuild a misremembered British past from the public graphics of roughly 1958–1978. At Ghost Box, founded in London in 2004, Julian House gave every release one template after the Penguin paperback grid and library-music LPs: bold grotesque type in a ruled Penguin-style band over a single saturated colour field and an eerie collage of textbook, science and occult imagery. Reynolds and Fisher called it hauntology; Richard Littler's Scarfolk turned it into sinister public-information posters.
Archivo; Hauntology used Monotype Grotesque (MT Grotesque), the main face of the Ghost Box front covers, chosen over Helvetica and Clarendon (Bitstream's cut) on Ghost Box back covers and booklets
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Hauntology, with a counter-accent from Hipster Artisanal Revival. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Hauntology & Ghost Box Design Hipster Artisanal Revival
-
#efe9d8ground · 36% -
#1e1b18ink · 14% -
#f9a61aaccent · 18% -
#8e2f25accent · 14% -
#01b2deaccent · 10% -
#c4a27aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe9d8;
--ink: #1e1b18;
--accent-1: #f9a61a;
--accent-2: #8e2f25;
--accent-3: #01b2de;
--accent-4: #c4a27a;
--font-display: "Jost", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Hauntology & Ghost Box Design: The Ghost Box sleeves and logo, Littler's Scarfolk images and Frances Castle's Clay Pipe sleeves are in copyright, and much of what they imitate (Penguin covers, government public information posters, textbook illustrations, archive photographs) has its own rights holders: build a new fictional institution from public-domain or licensed material rather than copying a Ghost Box sleeve or Penguin's trade dress.
Hipster Artisanal Revival: The hipster fashion and branding of the same years also borrowed pseudo-Native 'tribal' dress: Adrienne Keene's Native Appropriations (2010) answered the fashion for 'hipster headdresses' by noting that eagle feathers 'have to be earned', and in 2012 the Navajo Nation sued Urban Outfitters over goods sold under the 'Navajo' name. Keep to arrows, triangles and trade-mark devices; do not add feathered headdresses, war bonnets or 'tribal' and 'Navajo' patterns as a heritage shorthand.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Hauntology
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · House named Max Ernst among his influences: add an Ernst-like collage juxtaposition to a textbook photograph to make an educational image turn eerie.
- London Transport Design Pairs well · Borrow the logic of a public-service programme (fixed elements, a roundel, varied pictures within one system) to give an invented hauntological institution a believable house style.
- Vaporwave Contrasts · Both build nostalgia from found media, but vaporwave mourns consumer electronics in neon pastels on screens while hauntology misremembers public, educational print in flat offset colour on paper; choose which lost future a design should haunt.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) Contrasts · House names Peter Saville among his influences, but Saville's Factory sleeves quote one modernist or classical source per record, while Ghost Box invents a whole institution and dresses every release in its one template; choose a single quotation or a fictional series.
- Neo-Swiss Revival Contrasts · Swiss revival uses the modernist grid straight, crisp and current; hauntology keeps a grid but ages its pictures with grain and halftone and lets something uncanny into them.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Print the template on a risograph to get real grain, two or three inks and genuine misregistration instead of simulated wear.
- Witch House Graphics (Symbol Names and Haunted Web Imagery) Contrasts · Choose between Ghost Box's fictitious institutional series and this scene's coded artist identity: trade the ruled paperback title band for a glyph-name and a distressed photographic field.
- Dark Academia Contrasts · Both turn institutional nostalgia uncanny, but Ghost Box uses grotesque type, halftone and flat fields where this is serif, photographic and dense.
With Hipster Artisanal Revival
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Contrasts · Where this dressed new firms as old ones, blanding dressed them as frictionless and new, with lowercase geometric sans, pastels and white space; set the two side by side to place a brand between heritage and novelty.
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Pairs well · Go back to the source: swap the stock badge parts for real jobbing type, printers' rules and stock borders to turn pastiche into the trade print it quotes.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · The same small-batch maker economy; print the badge in one riso ink on uncoated stock to get real ink grain instead of a distress overlay.
- Flat Design Contrasts · Its contemporary on screen was textureless and many-coloured where this was single-ink and worn; one stamped badge inside a flat interface marks a product as hand-made.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign painting revived alongside it; paint the badge on the shop window or chalkboard so the lettering is made by hand instead of aged with a texture filter.
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Contrasts · Both pair a script with a geometric sans, but the craft badge tracks its capitals wide in a centred one-ink frame, while Lubalin kerns the same pairing until the letters touch and join. Set one against the other to decide whether the letters should breathe or fuse.
- Cottagecore Contrasts · Shares handmade, small-batch values, but swap its black-and-white urban badges for soft colour and florals to get cottagecore.
- European Heraldry Contrasts · The craft badge borrows heraldry's air of lineage with an 'Est.' date and crossed arrows on kraft paper, while a real coat of arms is a granted or inherited, blazoned identity in strong tinctures; set the two side by side to show the difference between quoting heritage and holding it.