Style combination · Pairs well

L'Association and French Alternative Comics × Risograph

Give a black-and-white comic a one- or two-ink Risograph cover to bring its small-press book design into today's indie print culture.

From the research on L'Association and French Alternative Comics

Mix them and make something L'Association and French Alternative Comics Risograph

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from L'Association and French Alternative Comics, their arrangement from L'Association and French Alternative Comics, the finish from Risograph. 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.

L'Association and French Alternative Comics Risograph & Indie Print Culture

Type from L'Association and French Alternative Comics: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Risograph: Limited spot colours
Fluorescent & neon

L'Association and French Alternative Comics avoids fluorescent & neon: this is where the two pull against each other.
Form from L'Association and French Alternative Comics: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from L'Association and French Alternative Comics: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from Risograph: Misregistration & overprint
Grain & noise

The type

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

Display · L'Association and French Alternative Comics

Hello

Londrina Solid, standing in for Captions and balloons lettered by hand in each author's own writing: slanted mixed-case handwriting in David B.'s caption boxes (Le Cheval blême, L'Ascension du Haut Mal), even capitals in Satrapi's (Persepolis), loose felt-tip capitals in Trondheim's balloons (Lapinot)

Text · Risograph

A contemporary culture of zines, art books, posters and prints made on Japanese Risograph stencil duplicators, whose soy-based spot inks (fluorescent pink, yellow, blue, teal) are laid down one drum at a time. Designers embrace the machine's limits: translucent overprints, slight misregistration, grainy coverage and coarse halftones give flat illustration and type a warm, handmade vibrancy at low cost.

Inter; Risograph used Neo-grotesques set large and Monospace and typewriter faces

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Risograph, with a counter-accent from L'Association and French Alternative Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

L'Association and French Alternative Comics Risograph & Indie Print Culture

#f4f1ea ground · 36%
#3255a4 ink · 14%
#ff48b0 accent · 18%
#ffb200 accent · 14%
#f15060 accent · 10%
#7cc7d9 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1ea;
  --ink: #3255a4;
  --accent-1: #ff48b0;
  --accent-2: #ffb200;
  --accent-3: #f15060;
  --accent-4: #7cc7d9;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

L'Association and French Alternative Comics: The leading authors are living, named people and much of the work is memoir of real events, so never ask an image model for a named author's hand, and never attribute invented pages or opinions to them; Persepolis tells a real Iranian childhood under revolution and war, so do not lift its veiled schoolgirls as generic shorthand for Iran or for Muslim women; and David B.'s monsters in L'Ascension du Haut Mal are one family's account of epilepsy, not a generic image of illness or disability.