Style combination · Contrasts

Japanese Postwar Modernism × Yuru-chara

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.

From the research on Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)

Mix them and make something Japanese Postwar Modernism Yuru-chara

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Yuru-chara, their arrangement from Japanese Postwar Modernism, the finish from Japanese Postwar Modernism. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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 Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)

Type from Yuru-chara: Hand-lettering
Rounded sans
Colour from Japanese Postwar Modernism: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Yuru-chara: Stylised figuration
Rounded & pill
Composition from Japanese Postwar Modernism: Generous white space
Single focal point
Surface from Japanese Postwar Modernism: Flat

The type

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

Display · Yuru-chara

Wow

Zen Maru Gothic, standing in for Maru gothic (rounded gothic) Japanese type, such as Morisawa's Shin Maru Go, for captions, event banners and goods

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 Yuru-chara. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Japanese Postwar Modernism Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)

#f4f1ea ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#d7261e accent · 18%
#ffd23f accent · 14%
#c8a24a accent · 10%
#1d3c78 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1ea;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #d7261e;
  --accent-2: #ffd23f;
  --accent-3: #c8a24a;
  --accent-4: #1d3c78;
  --font-display: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design): Mascots are owned designs: Kumamon's copyright is held by Kumamoto Prefecture, which allows free use in Japan only with its permission and a displayed permit number, and Hikone and Hikonyan's illustrator fought over the character's rights from 2007 through mediation, a 2011 court ruling and a 2012 settlement, so invent an original character for each place and agree rights with the illustrator first. Keep sacred figures out of the joke: Buddhist groups in Nara objected that Sento-kun, a Buddha-like child with deer antlers, insulted the Buddha. And do not use a cute mascot to soften a contested public risk, as with the tritium mascot that Japan's Reconstruction Agency made to promote releasing treated water from Fukushima, pulled a day after its release in April 2021.