Style combination · Contrasts
Japonisme × Victorian Letterpress
Against a stacked, many-faced Victorian bill, a single cropped motif in an empty field reads as calm sophistication.
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.
Japonisme Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from Victorian Letterpress
-
Japonisme avoids eclectic mixing: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Colour from Japonisme
- Form from Japonisme
- Composition from Japonisme
-
Victorian Letterpress avoids dynamic asymmetry: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Surface from Victorian Letterpress
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Victorian Letterpress
Rose
Abril Fatface, standing in for Fat face romans (Thorne, Figgins)
Text · Japonisme
The Western absorption of Japanese woodblock prints, textiles and crafts after Japan reopened to trade in the 1850s. Artists and designers borrowed ukiyo-e's flat colour, bold contours, off-centre and cropped compositions, high viewpoints and crest-like emblems; these devices dissolved academic perspective and set the visual grammar of the modern poster and of Art Nouveau.
Hanken Grotesk; Japonisme used Auriol and Brush-drawn display lettering imitating Japanese calligraphy
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Japonisme, with a counter-accent from Victorian Letterpress. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Japonisme Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
-
#f1e6cfground · 36% -
#22201eink · 14% -
#c8452caccent · 18% -
#d9b26faccent · 14% -
#2b4c7eaccent · 10% -
#8fa58aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f1e6cf;
--ink: #22201e;
--accent-1: #c8452c;
--accent-2: #d9b26f;
--accent-3: #2b4c7e;
--accent-4: #8fa58a;
--font-display: "Abril Fatface", serif;
--font-text: "Hanken Grotesk", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Japonisme
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Combine Japonisme's cropped figures with postwar Japanese emblem-and-field posters to bridge two centuries of East–West exchange.
- Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics Pairs well · Add wabi-sabi's emptiness and natural texture to push Japonisme's asymmetry toward quieter, more contemplative layouts.
- Flat Design Pairs well · Borrow ukiyo-e cropping and diagonals to make flat vector illustrations feel composed rather than centred and static.
- Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich) Pairs well · Heine drew on Japanese woodcuts: add japonisme's cropped asymmetry and silhouetted figures against blank grounds to give a caricature more air and bite.
- Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints Pairs well · Its direct European heir: combine ukiyo-e cropping and flat colour with Western display lettering for a Japonisme poster.
- Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop) Contrasts · Both are Western absorptions of another culture's art, but Japonisme learned formal lessons (flat colour, cropping, asymmetry) while tiki took the sacred figures themselves as mascots; borrow a way of composing, not a god.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Pairs well · Crane's flattened planes and outlines owe much to Japanese prints; push the flatness further for a more graphic page.
- Rinpa & Saga-bon 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.
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.