Style combination · Contrasts

Kinngait Inuit Printmaking × Northwest Coast Formline Design

Both are Indigenous North American arts with their own protocols, but formline compresses a crest being until it fills its field, while Kinngait leaves open paper around a free silhouette; never blend the two into a generic 'Native' look.

From the research on Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking

Mix them and make something Kinngait Inuit Printmaking Northwest Coast Formline Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Northwest Coast Formline Design, 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.

Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking Northwest Coast Formline Design

Type from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking
Colour from Northwest Coast Formline Design: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Northwest Coast Formline Design: Stylised figuration
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from Kinngait Inuit Printmaking: Isolated object
Generous white space

Northwest Coast Formline Design avoids generous white space: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
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 · Kinngait Inuit Printmaking

Together

Caveat, standing in for From the mid-1970s, the artist's pencil signature beneath the image, beside the title and an edition number such as 43/50; up to and sometimes including 1974 the artist's carved chop stood in for the signature (Dorset Fine Arts, Stonecut: Chops). Kenojuak's syllabic signature, ᑭᓄᐊᔪᐊ, on a colour trial proof of The Enchanted Owl was added later (First Arts)

Text · Northwest Coast Formline Design

The two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast nations, painted, carved and woven onto boxes, house fronts, robes and hats, and printed as serigraphs since the 1960s. A continuous black primary formline that swells and tapers joins ovoids, U-forms and S-forms into hereditary crest beings, with red secondary lines and blue-green tertiary areas. The figure is split, splayed and compressed until it fills its field.

Archivo; Northwest Coast Formline Design used Hand-lettered captions and titling in Yahgulanaas's Haida Manga and Latin faces with full Lingít and X̱aad Kíl orthographic support (x̱, g̱, ḵ), e.g. Noto Sans, for accompanying text

The colours

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

Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking Northwest Coast Formline Design

#efe9dd ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#a8261d accent · 18%
#b98a5e accent · 14%
#2c5a8c accent · 10%
#2f6a5a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe9dd;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #a8261d;
  --accent-2: #b98a5e;
  --accent-3: #2c5a8c;
  --accent-4: #2f6a5a;
  --font-display: "Caveat", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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.

Northwest Coast Formline Design: Formline images are hereditary crests: the raven, eagle, killer whale, bear, beaver and other beings belong to particular clans, houses and lineages, their display is tied to rights validated at potlatches and feasts, and some designs and stories are restricted. The tradition belongs to the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian and Heiltsuk nations, not to a generic 'Pacific Northwest' style. Commission or license work from artists of those nations, credit them by name and nation, and never redraw crests or assemble pseudo-formline from ovoids and U-forms.

The two styles

A large stylized blue humpback whale angles upward to the right on a cream background, with cream throat stripes and spots and a gray tail. Red uppercase lettering at the top reads “RETURN.”

1957–present · North America Kinngait (Cape Dorset) 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. 1700–present · North America Northwest Coast Formline Design The two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast nations, painted, carved and woven onto boxes, house fronts, robes and hats, and printed as serigraphs since the 1960s. A continuous black primary formline that swells and tapers joins ovoids, U-forms and S-forms into hereditary crest beings, with red secondary lines and blue-green tertiary areas. The figure is split, splayed and compressed until it fills its field.