Light Novel Cover Illustration × Superflat

Murakami's fine-art quotation of the same otaku idiom, flattened and ironic, where the cover sells a book sincerely.

From the research on Light Novel Cover Illustration

Mix them and make something Light Novel Cover Illustration Superflat

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Superflat, their arrangement from Light Novel Cover Illustration, the finish from Light Novel Cover Illustration. 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.

Light Novel Cover Illustration Superflat

Type from Light Novel Cover Illustration: Ornamented display
Eclectic mixing
Colour from Superflat: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Superflat: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Light Novel Cover Illustration: Single focal point
Isolated object
Surface from Light Novel Cover Illustration: Gloss & highlights

The type

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

Display · Light Novel Cover Illustration

Pop

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Custom title logos drawn for each series, combining kanji and kana with a Latin or katakana subtitle, outlined or shadowed to sit over the illustration

Text · 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.

Zen Maru Gothic; Superflat used Letters drawn into the character and Many-coloured repeated monogram

The colours

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

Light Novel Cover Illustration Superflat

#fbfaf5 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#ffd900 accent · 18%
#f2c94c accent · 14%
#00a0e9 accent · 10%
#8fc8f0 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbfaf5;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #ffd900;
  --accent-2: #f2c94c;
  --accent-3: #00a0e9;
  --accent-4: #8fc8f0;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Light Novel Cover Illustration: Many covers sexualise heroines who look young; in generated images depict characters as clearly adult and avoid fan-service poses.

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.