Style combination · Pairs well

Kamon × Kinngait Inuit Printmaking

Both set one emblem small and alone on a plain ground; kamon builds it from compass arcs in one colour, Kinngait cuts it freehand and fades its colour, so take kamon's geometry when the mark must survive any size and Kinngait's softness when it should feel drawn.

From the research on Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking

Mix them and make something Kamon Kinngait Inuit Printmaking

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Kamon, their arrangement from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking, the finish from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking. 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.

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking

Type from Kamon
Colour from Kamon: Monochrome
Flat fields
Form from Kamon: Pictogram
Emblems & badges
Composition from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking: Isolated object
Generous white space
Surface from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · Kamon

Calm

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Brush-written kaisho (regular-script) kanji for shop names and family names on curtains and lanterns

Text · Kinngait Inuit Printmaking

Prints from the Inuit co-operative studio at Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, with a catalogued collection every year since 1959. Inuit artists draw; Inuit printmakers cut the drawing in stone or a stencil and print it by hand in editions of thirty (1959) and then fifty. A single figure, most often a bird or animal, floats as a flat silhouette in one to three inks on unprinted paper, and stencil daubing grades the colour inside it. This is the classic idiom; lithographs and etchings followed from the 1970s, and Annie Pootoogook, Shuvinai Ashoona and others have drawn contemporary Inuit life.

Caveat; Kinngait Inuit Printmaking used From the mid-1970s, the artist's pencil signature beneath the image, beside the title and an edition number such as 43/50 and Small carved chops of artist and printer, often cut from linoleum floor tile, stacked with the studio's mark in a vertical column in the margin of the stonecuts and stencils, as reproduced in the 1959 and 1960 catalogues

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Kamon, with a counter-accent from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking

#f3efe6 ground · 36%
#121212 ink · 14%
#b38f3d accent · 18%
#b5352c accent · 14%
#2c5a8c accent · 10%
#1d2b47 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe6;
  --ink: #121212;
  --accent-1: #b38f3d;
  --accent-2: #b5352c;
  --accent-3: #2c5a8c;
  --accent-4: #1d2b47;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Caveat", cursive;
}

Use it with care

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Mon are inherited marks of particular families, shrines, temples and institutions. Only the imperial chrysanthemum is named in Japanese law: the Trademark Act (art. 4(1)(i)) bars registering it or anything like it. The government's paulownia, though the official emblem of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, was never given the same legal restrictions, while famous crests registered as trademarks, such as Mitsubishi's three diamonds, are protected as marks. Do not use the chrysanthemum, the government paulownia, or any identifiable family's, shrine's or temple's crest as decoration or as a brand. Imperial emblems can also recall Japan's wartime empire for audiences in Korea and China. The manji (卍), a standard crest (the Hachisuka clan; the temple crest of Sensō-ji), is read in the West as the Nazi swastika: avoid it outside a Japanese context that explains it. Draw new crests by the tradition's rules instead of borrowing real ones, and commission or credit working monsho uwaeshi, who still draw and paint crests by hand.

Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking: Kinngait printmaking is the living, collectively run art of an Inuit community, and its images belong to named Inuit artists and printmakers whose copyright the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative manages as their agent: license or commission work through the co-operative or Dorset Fine Arts rather than tracing a print. Borrow the system (a lone silhouette floating on open paper, one to three inks, stencil-graded colour, stone-cut edges), not a particular artist's owl, sun or hand. Do not invent Inuit spirit beings, shamans, the sea goddess or hunting rites as decoration; picture the subject the brief supplies. Never add a syllabic signature, artist's or printer's chops, the studio's mark, an edition number or the igloo authenticity symbol to generated work, and never present it as a Kinngait or Inuit print. Say 'Inuit', not 'Eskimo', except in historical names such as the co-operative's, and do not let Kinngait stand for all Inuit art: other communities, such as Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), have their own print studios and styles.