Style combination · Contrasts
Imagerie d'Épinal × Victorian Letterpress
The same century's printers, but jobbing letterpress leads with mixed display type in one or two inks, while the Épinal sheet leads with a stencil-coloured picture and keeps type to a title and a caption block; set them side by side to choose between a notice and a picture.
Mix them and make something Imagerie d'Épinal Victorian Letterpress
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.
Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from Victorian Letterpress
- Colour from Victorian Letterpress
- Form from Imagerie d'Épinal
- Composition from Imagerie d'Épinal
- Surface from Imagerie d'Épinal
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Victorian Letterpress
Square
Abril Fatface, standing in for Fat face romans (Thorne, Figgins)
Text · Imagerie d'Épinal
Cheap single-sheet popular prints sold by pedlars across 19th-century Europe, led by the Pellerin imagerie at Épinal and the Neuruppin Bilderbogen. A black woodcut, and later a lithograph, was coloured by hand through stencils in a few flat colours that drift past the outlines: Napoleonic battles, saints, rows of soldiers to cut out, and stories told in grids of equal captioned cases, under a title in roman capitals, or Fraktur in Germany.
Bodoni Moda; Imagerie d'Épinal used Bold modern-face (Didone) roman capitals for the centred title, sometimes shaded or outlined and Small roman text in a justified block beneath the picture, with the imprint ('De la fabrique de Pellerin, imprimeur-libraire, à Épinal') in capitals and 'Propriété de l'Éditeur. Déposé.' in italic
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Victorian Letterpress, with a counter-accent from Imagerie d'Épinal. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
-
#efe4c9ground · 36% -
#1b1a17ink · 14% -
#b3322baccent · 18% -
#e4bb3aaccent · 14% -
#24477daccent · 10% -
#3f8a5caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe4c9;
--ink: #1b1a17;
--accent-1: #b3322b;
--accent-2: #e4bb3a;
--accent-3: #24477d;
--accent-4: #3f8a5c;
--font-display: "Abril Fatface", serif;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}Use it with care
Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen: Many sheets carry nationalist, militarist and colonial messages, from the Napoleonic legend to colonial campaigns such as the Tonkin war, and some show colonised peoples as 'savages' (the Kühn Robinson sheet captions 'die Wilden' slaughtering captives at a feast), so do not reproduce these figures as period charm; the Imagerie d'Épinal still trades under its name, so draw new sheets rather than copying its marks.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Imagerie d'Épinal
- Lubok Popular Print Contrasts · Both are pedlars' broadsheets coloured by hand, but the lubok crams verse into the gaps around its figures and brushes washes on freely, while the Épinal sheet keeps its text beneath a ruled frame and stencils colour across rows of repeated figures; choose the lubok for jostling satire and Épinal for an orderly catalogue or story.
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Pairs well · Posada's hojas volantes are another pedlar broadsheet with a crude relief picture over a block of text; add Épinal's stencil colour to a black relief broadsheet for a hand-coloured street print.
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics Pairs well · Both line up identical figures in rows, Épinal to be cut out as toy soldiers and Isotype to count; borrow Isotype's rule that one figure stands for a quantity to turn a sheet of soldiers into a readable chart.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Riso's few flat inks and drifting registration reproduce the stencil float of an Épinal sheet; print rows of repeated figures in red, blue and yellow over a black key for a contemporary imagerie.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Pairs well · Both read as captioned grids of drawn cases with clear contour and flat colour; give a clear-line strip Épinal's stencil drift, roman-capital title and caption under every case for a 19th-century picture-story feel.
- Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram) Contrasts · Both centre a framed picture over a block of text, but the Épinal sheet tells a popular story in stencil colour for a broad public, while the emblem is a learned monochrome riddle, one to a page, read slowly in sequence.
- Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards Contrasts · Both stencil-colour a black woodcut key in a few drifting colours, but the Épinal sheet tells a story in grids of captioned cases and marches rows of soldiers, while the tarot card isolates one emblematic subject under a numeral and a title; choose tarot for a single symbol, Épinal for a sequence.
- Lotería Card Imagery (Mexican Lotería) Contrasts · Both are cheap coloured popular prints of stock figures in ruled frames under capital captions, but an Épinal sheet tells a story or musters a row of soldiers across many cases, while a lotería card holds one emblem and the tabla's cells have no order: the caller draws them by chance.
With Victorian Letterpress
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign writers and type founders traded letterforms; add brushed shading and drop shadows to wood-type headlines for a street-made feel.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revived Victorian display faces with irony; mix one wood-type headline with modern illustration for the same knowing nostalgia.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · One face, flush left and white space against a centred clamour of faces: use the contrast to test whether hierarchy needs variety at all.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Morris reacted against exactly this commercial clutter; set the two side by side to show craft restraint versus jobbing exuberance.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · A Victorian mixed-face handbill is the clutter Ulm's one-family rule was meant to cure; use it as a before-and-after foil.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Contrasts · Its black-letter-dense, type-and-ornament jobbing page is the opposite of a picture-led page; combine them by hanging a wood-type title over a flat colour picture.
- Dada Pairs well · Raid Victorian wood type and stock ornaments as the Dadaists did, but scatter them instead of centring them.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.