Stylogeny combining Jamaican Dancehall Signs × International Typographic Style

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Style combination · Contrasts

Jamaican Dancehall Signs × International Typographic Style

Grid, white space and one neutral sans are everything the dance sign refuses; quote a painted sign inside a Swiss layout to make it shout.

From the research on Jamaican Dancehall Signs & Sleeve Art

Mix them and make something Jamaican Dancehall Signs International Typographic Style

INDEXINDEXJamaican Dancehall × International Typographic
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from International Typographic Style, their arrangement from Jamaican Dancehall Signs, the finish from Jamaican Dancehall Signs. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Jamaican Dancehall Signs & Sleeve Art International Typographic Style

Type from Jamaican Dancehall Signs
Colour from International Typographic Style
Form from International Typographic Style
Composition from Jamaican Dancehall Signs
Surface from Jamaican Dancehall Signs

02

The type

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

Display · Jamaican Dancehall Signs

Index

Bangers, standing in for Wilfred Limonious's hand-drawn cartoon titling and speech balloons

Text · International Typographic Style

A post-war refinement of the New Typography in which the mathematical grid, objective photography and neo-grotesque sans-serifs were used to communicate with clarity and neutrality. Taught at the Basel and Zurich schools, it became the default language of international corporate and institutional communication.

Inter; International Typographic Style used Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from Jamaican Dancehall Signs. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Jamaican Dancehall Signs & Sleeve Art International Typographic Style

  • #f2f0e9 ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #e1251b accent · 18%
  • #1f4e9c accent · 14%
  • #1d5fd0 accent · 10%
  • #7a7a7a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2f0e9;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #e1251b;
  --accent-2: #1f4e9c;
  --accent-3: #1d5fd0;
  --accent-4: #7a7a7a;
  --font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

A brightly painted sign reads “BASSWAR” in enormous yellow letters above “RUMBLE VS UPRISING,” with the date, venue and admission price along the bottom. Red, green, blue and pink lightning bolts and jagged starbursts fill the spaces around the thick, shadowed lettering. 1980–present · Latin America & Caribbean Jamaican Dancehall Signs & Sleeve Art The street graphics of Jamaica's dancehall era. One-off hand-painted signs, nailed to light poles and trees, announce sound-system dances and clashes, with sound-system and artist names stacked in bold, bright letters. On record sleeves, Wilfred Limonious's crowded comic caricatures gave the music its face. Both are ephemeral and topical: the signs are mostly unsigned, rarely dated and burned as litter once the dance is over. The words “Urban Systems” appear in large black and red lettering at the upper left of an off-white cover. Tall blue, black and grey rectangular blocks rise from the bottom, with fine vertical dividing lines and a red circle at the upper right. 1950–1975 · Central Europe International Typographic Style A post-war refinement of the New Typography in which the mathematical grid, objective photography and neo-grotesque sans-serifs were used to communicate with clarity and neutrality. Taught at the Basel and Zurich schools, it became the default language of international corporate and institutional communication.

05

More combinations

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