Style combination · Pairs well
Japanese Postwar Modernism × Rinpa
Tanaka Ikkō drew many 1960s–70s posters from Rinpa and has been called a 20th-century Rinpa artist, and in 2015 ten Japanese graphic designers made Rinpa posters, Hara Kenya's on real gold leaf: add a gold ground and a single cropped seasonal motif to a modernist grid for warmth and seasonality.
Mix them and make something Japanese Postwar Modernism Rinpa
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 Rinpa & Saga-bon
- Type from Rinpa
- Colour from Japanese Postwar Modernism
- Form from Rinpa
- Composition from Japanese Postwar Modernism
- Surface from Rinpa
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Rinpa
Still
Shippori Mincho, standing in for Saga-bon wooden movable type: flowing hiragana mixed with kanji, cut mostly as single characters but also as linked sorts of two, three and four characters, after a hand in Kōetsu's manner
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 Rinpa. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Japanese Postwar Modernism Rinpa & Saga-bon
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#f4f1eaground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#d7261eaccent · 18% -
#b0412eaccent · 14% -
#c8a24aaccent · 10% -
#1f3f7aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f1ea;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #d7261e;
--accent-2: #b0412e;
--accent-3: #c8a24a;
--accent-4: #1f3f7a;
--font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
--font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Rinpa & Saga-bon: Poems on Rinpa works and Saga-bon pages are real Japanese texts: have any kana or kanji written or set and checked by a fluent reader, and never fill a design with pseudo-calligraphy as texture. Do not present a generated gold screen as a historical work or as a copy of a named National Treasure. A Kōrin-style plum or wave can be crest-like, but keep it free of any real family's, shrine's or temple's mon.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Japanese Postwar Modernism
- Angura Theatre Poster Contrasts · Tadanori Yokoo's angura theatre posters broke with this school; set one beside a Kamekura poster to calibrate restraint against overload.
- Kawaii Design Contrasts · Kawaii shows the soft, crowded face of Japanese visual culture; use the contrast to tune a brand between gravitas and charm.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Pairs well · Muji-era minimalism grew from this school; enlarge the empty field further and reduce the emblem to a whisper.
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · Graft a single emblematic disc or crest onto a Swiss grid to add focus and warmth without breaking its order.
- Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism Pairs well · 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.
- Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism) Pairs well · Japanese postwar emblematic colour fields share the reduction of nature to a few flat silhouettes, and two of Marimekko's leading designers, Katsuji Wakisaka and Fujiwo Ishimoto, came from Japan; pair one Japanese-style emblem with a Marimekko-scale repeat for a calm, nature-led identity.
- Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design) Contrasts · Postwar Japanese identities give institutions abstract, grid-built marks; a yuru-chara gives a prefecture a face, a name and a body that walks into festivals and shakes hands.
- Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration Contrasts · Postwar modernism replaced this sentimental figure with emblems and empty fields; set one against the other to calibrate warmth against austerity.
With Rinpa
- Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Pairs well · Kōrin patterns reduce a plum or a wave to an emblem much as a mon does; pair a crest-like Rinpa motif with a large open ground for packaging, keeping it free of any real family's crest.
- Art Nouveau Pairs well · Kamisaka Sekka was sent to Glasgow in 1901 and came back influenced by Art Nouveau, which he joined to Rinpa subjects; pair Rinpa's cropped irises and waves with Art Nouveau's floral lettering for a botanical label or poster.
- Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics Contrasts · Both come from Kyoto's tea culture (Kōetsu also made Raku tea bowls), but wabi-sabi wants rough clay and empty paper where Rinpa wants gold leaf and malachite; one bare field can serve either, so choose the material that fills it.
- Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism) Pairs well · Both enlarge a plant motif, crop it at the edge and repeat it across cloth; take Rinpa's metallic ground and pooled colour into a bold printed textile.
- Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Contrasts · The Ming/Mincho book letter is upright, separate and set square in a ruled grid; Saga-bon type is flowing kana linked across sorts on decorated paper. Use Mincho for running text and a Saga-bon-like hand for titles and poems.
- Vienna Secession Contrasts · Both set flat figures and pattern on gold, but the Secession locks them into frames and grids while Rinpa leaves the gold open and lets one motif drift across it; decide whether the gold should be a frame or a field.
- Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints Contrasts · Ukiyo-e carves a keyline, prints in editions for the city and depicts actors and courtesans; Rinpa paints pooled colour on gold for a few patrons and depicts plants, waves and birds. Choose between the street print and the gilded screen before settling a Japanese look.
- Japonisme Contrasts · Japonisme learned Japan mostly from woodblock prints, with keylines and flat colour on paper, though Kōrin reached Louis Gonse and Siegfried Bing in the 1880s through Hōitsu's Kōrin hyakuzu, and Gonse's L'Art japonais (1883) ranked him among the best decorative artists; borrow Rinpa's open gold ground and repeated plant motif to give a Japonist layout more space and shine.