Stylogeny combining Kawaii Design × Superflat

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Style combination · Contrasts

Kawaii Design × Superflat

Kawaii offers sincere, simple, pastel cuteness for fancy goods; switch to Superflat when the cute should be saturated, crowded, many-eyed and ironic, a comment on consumer culture rather than a product of it.

From the research on Superflat

Mix them and make something Kawaii Design Superflat

Yay!Kawaii Design × Superflat1970 · 1993
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Kawaii Design, their arrangement from Kawaii Design, the finish from Superflat. 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.

Kawaii Design Superflat

Type from Kawaii Design
Colour from Superflat
Form from Kawaii Design
Composition from Kawaii Design
Surface from Superflat

02

The type

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

Display · Kawaii Design

Yay!

Zen Maru Gothic, standing in for Maru-ji (rounded teenage handwriting, 1970s)

Text · Kawaii Design

Japan's culture of cuteness, which grew from 1970s teenage rounded handwriting and shōjo fancy goods into a global design language through Sanrio, character merchandise and emoji. Its decisions are simple and consistent: rounded forms, oversized heads and minimal faces, pastel or candy colour in flat fields, scattered hearts and sparkles, and friendly rounded type.

Zen Maru Gothic; Kawaii Design used Maru-ji and Maru Gothic rounded type

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Superflat, with a counter-accent from Kawaii Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Kawaii Design Superflat

  • #fbfaf5 ground · 36%
  • #1a1a1a ink · 14%
  • #ffd900 accent · 18%
  • #e60033 accent · 14%
  • #00a0e9 accent · 10%
  • #a8d8ff accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbfaf5;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #ffd900;
  --accent-2: #e60033;
  --accent-3: #00a0e9;
  --accent-4: #a8d8ff;
  --font-display: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Superflat: Some canonical works use explicit otaku sexual imagery, such as Murakami's My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), and associated artists engage with lolicon art: Mr. describes himself as a lolicon and Henmaru Machino parodies it; never sexualise childlike figures. The mushroom-cloud skulls of Murakami's Time Bokan works and the title Little Boy, the name of the Hiroshima bomb, refer to the atomic bombings, and critics such as Dong-Yeon Koh argue that this victim narrative obscures Japanese aggression in China and Korea; do not use mushroom clouds or skulls as cute decoration. Handle borrowed Buddhist iconography and phrases, such as Kannon, with respect, and draw original characters and flowers: Mr. DOB, the smiling flowers and the Louis Vuitton monogram are owned designs.

04

The two styles

A pastel homepage titled “Cloudy Days” features smiling clouds, a rabbit, a cat, and a rainbow surrounded by hearts, stars, and colorful squiggles. A rounded navigation bar sits above the illustration, with four illustrated pastel tiles across the bottom. 1970–present · East Asia Kawaii Design Japan's culture of cuteness, which grew from 1970s teenage rounded handwriting and shōjo fancy goods into a global design language through Sanrio, character merchandise and emoji. Its decisions are simple and consistent: rounded forms, oversized heads and minimal faces, pastel or candy colour in flat fields, scattered hearts and sparkles, and friendly rounded type. A densely packed, brightly coloured cartoon poster reads “HAPPYVERSE” above a smiling blue-haired character with extra eyes on their forehead, hair and outstretched palms. Smiling flowers, winged rabbits, floating creatures, stars and planets surround the character, with a smiling Earth at the bottom. 1993–present · East Asia, Global / networked Superflat The flat, saturated, cartoon-crowded look that Takashi Murakami named in his exhibition and manifesto Superflat (Tokyo, 2000; US tour 2001). It draws a line from Edo painting and prints to postwar anime and manga, and flattens high and low, art and merchandise into one plane. Smiling flowers, many-eyed characters and anime figures come in unshaded polychrome, smooth and glossy, cute and grotesque at once, sold as handbags and album covers as well as paintings. This entry follows the drawn core of Murakami and his Kaikai Kiki circle; the shows also held photography, video and sculpture.

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