Stylogeny combining Hauntology × Vaporwave

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Style combination · Contrasts

Hauntology × Vaporwave

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.

From the research on Hauntology & Ghost Box Design

Mix them and make something Hauntology Vaporwave

AGAINHauntology × Vaporwave2004 · 2011
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Hauntology, their arrangement from Vaporwave, the finish from Hauntology. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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 Vaporwave

Type from Vaporwave
Colour from Hauntology
Form from Hauntology
Composition from Vaporwave
Surface from Hauntology

02

The type

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

Display · Vaporwave

Again

Syncopate, standing in for Full-width Latin text (ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ)

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 Vaporwave. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hauntology & Ghost Box Design Vaporwave

  • #efe9d8 ground · 36%
  • #1e1b18 ink · 14%
  • #f9a61a accent · 18%
  • #01cdfe accent · 14%
  • #b967ff accent · 10%
  • #d51a21 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe9d8;
  --ink: #1e1b18;
  --accent-1: #f9a61a;
  --accent-2: #01cdfe;
  --accent-3: #b967ff;
  --accent-4: #d51a21;
  --font-display: "Syncopate", 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.

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The two styles

A distressed poster titled “Tide Signals” combines a coastal radar dome on rocky ground with a translucent halftone profile of a windswept person. A large yellow circle sits against a cyan background beneath a cream header bearing an archive name, circular emblem and the number 017. 2004–present · Western Europe Hauntology & Ghost Box Design 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. A large classical sculpted head rises from a turquoise swimming pool beneath a striped yellow-pink sun, surrounded by palm trees, waterfalls, city buildings and tropical foliage. Floating computer windows, a dolphin, cherry blossoms, a compact disc and a wireframe globe fill the pink-and-purple sky beneath the title “DREAM POOL.” 2011–2017 · Global / networked, North America Vaporwave An internet-born microgenre and visual aesthetic that remixes the debris of late-20th-century consumer culture (Windows 95 dialogs, classical busts, palm trees, mall interiors, Japanese text, early 3D renders) in pastel pinks and cyans. Emerging around 2011 from records by James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Vektroid, it is at once nostalgic homage and deadpan critique of corporate optimism.

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