Style combination · Pairs well

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism × Japanese Postwar Modernism

Take its single emblem on an empty field, then add a bilingual Chinese–English lockup and one ink stroke to move the poster from Tokyo to Hong Kong.

From the research on Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism

Mix them and make something Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism Japanese Postwar Modernism

A black silhouette of a junk sailing boat sits before a large red sun on an off-white background, with a sweeping blue brushstroke suggesting water below. Bold black lettering at the upper left reads “HARBOUR LIGHTS,” with Chinese characters beneath. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism, the form from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism, the composition from Japanese Postwar Modernism. Not a real or historical work.

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.

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism Japanese Postwar Modernism

Type from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Brush & pen calligraphy
Colour from Japanese Postwar Modernism: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Folk & sacred symbols
Geometric primitives
Composition from Japanese Postwar Modernism: Generous white space
Single focal point
Surface from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

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

Display · Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism

Order

Inter Tight, standing in for Sans-serifs for the Latin: Helvetica in Kan Tai-keung's poster for The Arch (1970); a bold sans skewed at thirty degrees in Steiner's 'Progress Hong Kong' (1975)

Text · 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.

Zen Kaku Gothic New; Japanese Postwar Modernism used Gothic and Mincho

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Japanese Postwar Modernism, with a counter-accent from Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism Japanese Postwar Modernism

#f4f1ea ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#d7261e accent · 18%
#c8a24a accent · 14%
#1d3c78 accent · 10%
#8c8b86 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1ea;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #d7261e;
  --accent-2: #c8a24a;
  --accent-3: #1d3c78;
  --accent-4: #8c8b86;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism: Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese characters, so do not substitute simplified forms, and have every Chinese word in a lockup checked by a literate reader, since image models often invent or garble characters. The style used real Chinese signs and characters for their meaning, such as the coin and 中 of the Bank of China emblem; do not fall back on brush-effect 'chop-suey' Latin fonts or random characters as exotic texture.