Style combination · Pairs well
Hauntology × Surrealist Graphics
House named Max Ernst among his influences: add an Ernst-like collage juxtaposition to a textbook photograph to make an educational image turn eerie.
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 Surrealist Graphics
- Type from Hauntology
- Colour from Hauntology
- Form from Surrealist Graphics
- Composition from Surrealist Graphics
- Surface from Hauntology
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Hauntology
Wow.
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
Text · Surrealist Graphics
Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious. Its graphic legacy (uncanny collage from old engravings, solarised and cameraless photographs, impossible juxtapositions painted with illusionistic precision) passed through magazines like Minotaure into fashion, advertising and book design on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bodoni Moda; Surrealist Graphics used Artists' hand-lettered mastheads and Didone and Victorian display faces lifted from 19th-century catalogues
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Hauntology, with a counter-accent from Surrealist Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Hauntology & Ghost Box Design Surrealist Graphics
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#efe9d8ground · 36% -
#1e1b18ink · 14% -
#f9a61aaccent · 18% -
#a24a2aaccent · 14% -
#01b2deaccent · 10% -
#d8b77aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe9d8;
--ink: #1e1b18;
--accent-1: #f9a61a;
--accent-2: #a24a2a;
--accent-3: #01b2de;
--accent-4: #d8b77a;
--font-display: "Archivo", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", 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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Hauntology
- 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.
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · 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.
- 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 Surrealist Graphics
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Place a single dream image inside a strict corporate grid; the calm system heightens the strangeness.
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics Contrasts · Isotype's one-symbol-one-meaning is the antithesis of Surrealist ambiguity; decide whether the viewer should decode or be disturbed.
- Psychedelic Poster Pairs well · Psychedelic posters revived Surrealist dream imagery; combine them for hallucinatory figurative work with melting forms.
- Polish Poster School Pairs well · Polish poster artists fused Surrealist metaphor with painterly lettering; borrow the method for cultural posters built on one uncanny image.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) Pairs well · Vaughan Oliver drew on Dalí and Surrealism; add an uncanny juxtaposition to a blurred, textured 23 Envelope photograph for a dream-like sleeve.
- Brodovitch Editorial Design (Harper's Bazaar) Pairs well · Take its isolated body parts, torn edges and dreamlike juxtaposition, but apply them to the photographic spread.
- AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Pairs well · Surrealist photography also makes the impossible look photographed; take its dream logic when a brief needs strangeness, and add the AIZ headline and caption when that strangeness has to land a political point.
- Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram) Pairs well · Both find meaning in the gap between a picture and the words beside it; pair a framed, uncanny object with a terse motto above and a short verse below for an editorial series that asks to be decoded.