Style combination · Pairs well
Slow-Living Editorial × Ma
Leonard Koren, author of the 1994 book on wabi-sabi for designers, joined Kinfolk's editorial board in 2016; add a cracked bowl, raw linen or an off-centre object on a bare ground to make the calm less styled and more lived-in.
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.
Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look) Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics
- Type from Slow-Living Editorial
- Colour from Ma
- Form from Slow-Living Editorial
- Composition from Ma
- Surface from Ma
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Slow-Living Editorial
Calm
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 · Ma
A Japanese aesthetic rooted in Zen and the wabi tea ceremony that prizes austerity, imperfection, impermanence and the charged interval (ma) between things. In graphic design it appears as vast empty grounds, a single off-centre element, muted natural colours, visible material texture and the unrepeatable brush mark, from ink painting to Muji's 'emptiness'.
Shippori Mincho; Ma used Bokuseki and Sōsho cursive kana and kanji
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Ma, 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) Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics
-
#e9e4d8ground · 39% -
#2b2a28ink · 15% -
#7d4e3aaccent · 20% -
#9a7b5faccent · 15% -
#b9a88aaccent · 11%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #e9e4d8;
--ink: #2b2a28;
--accent-1: #7d4e3a;
--accent-2: #9a7b5f;
--accent-3: #b9a88a;
--font-display: "EB Garamond", serif;
--font-text: "Shippori Mincho", 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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Slow-Living Editorial
- ECM Sleeve Aesthetic (Munich) Contrasts · The nearest genome: one photograph, small type and silence, but ECM's picture is a wintry, often black-and-white landscape without people, while Kinfolk's is a warm, peopled interior or laid table; pick ECM for solitude and this for company.
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · The same Portland-era milieu of reclaimed wood and small makers, but where the craft badge piles crossed arrows, scripts and an 'Est.' date into one knowing emblem, the Kinfolk look drops the ornament and the irony and lets a quiet photograph carry the page.
- Scandinavian Functionalism Pairs well · The magazine moved to Copenhagen in 2015 and opened a gallery designed by Norm Architects; borrow Nordic furniture, plain materials and clear sans-serif signage to give the soft photography a sturdier, more architectural frame.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · 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.
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Contrasts · Both use pastels and white space for warmth, but blanding sets lowercase geometric wordmarks and products on seamless backdrops for the phone, while this sets serif text beside lived-in rooms in natural light for print; choose between frictionless and slow.
- Modern Calligraphy and Brush Lettering Pairs well · Set one written name or headline over Kinfolk's humanist-serif text, white margins and soft natural-light photographs, so the hand carries the feeling and the type carries the reading.
- Dark Academia Contrasts · Shares muted earth tones and humanist serifs, but airy and light where this is dim and dense.
- Cottagecore Contrasts · Shares soft natural light and slow living, but is minimal and photographic where cottagecore is floral and illustrated.
With Ma
- Minimalist Graphic Design Pairs well · Add one rough material or brush mark to a minimalist layout so its emptiness feels lived-in rather than sterile.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Use a modernist grid but leave whole modules empty, the way Tanaka and Hara let ma structure the page.
- Memphis Design Contrasts · Memphis is loud, synthetic and glossy; set one Memphis squiggle on a vast wabi ground only if you want deliberate friction.
- Scandinavian Functionalism Pairs well · Both prize natural materials and restraint; combine Nordic clarity with wabi irregularity for warm, quiet identities.
- Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition Pairs well · Both make the empty interval carry meaning and place a few elements off-centre in earth colours; uli supplies a living line and named signs where wabi-sabi supplies texture and a single mark.
- Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi) Pairs well · Give one brushed word a wide, quiet field of paper-toned space so its dry streaks and pooled ink read as the whole design.
- Rinpa & Saga-bon Contrasts · Both come from Kyoto's tea culture (Kōetsu also made Raku tea bowls), but wabi-sabi wants rough clay and empty paper where Rinpa wants gold leaf and malachite; one bare field can serve either, so choose the material that fills it.
- Supergraphics Contrasts · Quiet, unfinished interiors against loud, total colour make a deliberate counterweight in a mixed scheme.