Style combination · Contrasts

Slow-Living Editorial × Minimalist Graphic Design

The parent: both stand one element in a great deal of white, but minimalism keeps it neutral, sans-serif and often abstract, while the Kinfolk look sets a classical serif beside a naturally lit photograph of people, food and rooms. Choose it when the emptiness should feel domestic and warm rather than cool and exact.

From the research on Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)

Mix them and make something Slow-Living Editorial Minimalist Graphic Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Slow-Living Editorial, their arrangement from Minimalist Graphic Design, the finish from Slow-Living Editorial. 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.

Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look) Minimalist Graphic Design

Type from Slow-Living Editorial: Humanist & Garalde serif
Wide letterspacing
Colour from Minimalist Graphic Design: Monochrome
Flat fields
Form from Slow-Living Editorial: Naturalistic depiction
Ornament-free
Composition from Minimalist Graphic Design: Isolated object
Generous white space
Surface from Slow-Living Editorial: Grain & noise

The type

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

Display · Slow-Living Editorial

Quiet

EB Garamond, standing in for Garamond, Kinfolk's brand typeface, kept for body text through Charlotte Heal's 2015 redesign (It's Nice That, 2015)

Text · Minimalist Graphic Design

Modernism reduced to its barest means, informed by 1960s Minimal art and Japanese emptiness: one image or line of type, vast white or neutral space, a monochrome or near-monochrome palette and meticulous typographic detail. From ECM record sleeves to Muji and Apple packaging, it signals quality, calm and confidence by withholding rather than adding.

Inter; Minimalist Graphic Design used Helvetica Neue and Akzidenz-Grotesk

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Minimalist Graphic Design, with a counter-accent from Slow-Living Editorial. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look) Minimalist Graphic Design

#ffffff ground · 39%
#1a1a1a ink · 15%
#d9d6d0 accent · 20%
#9a7b5f accent · 15%
#b8bfae accent · 11%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffffff;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #d9d6d0;
  --accent-2: #9a7b5f;
  --accent-3: #b8bfae;
  --font-display: "EB Garamond", serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look): Kinfolk and Cereal are living titles with their own mastheads and photographers: take the method (natural light, wide margins, a quiet serif), shoot or license your own pictures, and never letter the KINFOLK masthead or present a layout as an issue. Critics noted that its early pages pictured mostly young, white and beautiful people; cast, locate and style photographs widely so the calm does not become a single social type. By 2016 the magazine itself was casting more widely (FIT Library blog), so take the later issues, not the early imitators, as the model.