Stylogeny combining Japanese Postwar Modernism × Mavo

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Style combination · Contrasts

Japanese Postwar Modernism × Mavo

Postwar Japanese modernism keeps one emblem in wide white space; Mavo fills every compartment, so choose between calm authority and a crowded, shouting page.

From the research on Mavo

Mix them and make something Japanese Postwar Modernism Mavo

LoudJapanese Postwar × Mavo1950 · 1923
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Mavo, their arrangement from Japanese Postwar Modernism, the finish from Mavo. 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.

Japanese Postwar Modernism Mavo

Type from Mavo

Japanese Postwar Modernism avoids eclectic mixing: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

Colour from Japanese Postwar Modernism
Form from Mavo
Composition from Japanese Postwar Modernism

Mavo avoids generous white space: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

Surface from Mavo

02

The type

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

Display · Mavo

Loud

Big Shoulders, standing in for Blocky hand-drawn masthead letters

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

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Japanese Postwar Modernism, with a counter-accent from Mavo. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Japanese Postwar Modernism Mavo

  • #f4f1ea ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #d7261e accent · 18%
  • #c8a24a accent · 14%
  • #1d3c78 accent · 10%
  • #c9367f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1ea;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #d7261e;
  --accent-2: #c8a24a;
  --accent-3: #1d3c78;
  --accent-4: #c9367f;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

A large red sun sits above and behind a black triangular mountain with a gold tip on an off-white background. Bold black characters reading “太陽” appear in the upper-left corner. 1950–1990 · East Asia 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. 1923–1925 · East Asia Mavo Tokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925). Covers carry a huge hand-drawn title; inside, machine-set type collides with hand-drawn kanji, kana and Latin letters, some sideways or upside down, inside heavy black or red rules that box the page. Original linocuts of abstract machine forms sit on real newspaper sheets bound in as pages, some turned 90 degrees so horizontal newsprint crosses vertical text. One cover carried a firecracker.

05

More combinations

With Japanese Postwar Modernism

All 26 combinations with Japanese Postwar Modernism

With Mavo

Every style combination