Style combination · Contrasts

Ligne Claire × Moomin Graphics

Both close figures in a clean contour, but the clear line refuses hatching and fills with flat colour, while Moomin hatches its landscapes and lives in black and white.

From the research on Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife)

Mix them and make something Ligne Claire Moomin Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Moomin Graphics, their arrangement from Ligne Claire, the finish from Moomin Graphics. 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.

Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife)

Type from Ligne Claire: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Ligne Claire: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Moomin Graphics: Rounded & pill
Stylised figuration
Composition from Ligne Claire: Sequential narrative
Framed panels
Surface from Moomin Graphics

The type

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

Display · Ligne Claire

Pop

Londrina Solid, standing in for Bold hand-drawn capitals for titles (album titles under a small header naming the author and series: black on a coloured ground, THE BLUE LOTUS on red; yellow on a night sky, EXPLORERS ON THE MOON)

Text · Moomin Graphics

The pen-and-ink world of Tove Jansson's Moomin books (1945-1977) and newspaper strip (1947-1975): round, white, snouted trolls drawn in a sure, fine black line, small against hatched forests, seas and night skies, in strips of framed panels with hand-lettered balloons. Her drawings are small and mostly black ink on white paper, with a second, full-colour gouache mode in three picture books. Since 1990 Arabia's mugs and other licensed goods adapt single drawings onto white grounds with one or two soft flat colours, turning one artist's hand into a living graphic system.

Comic Neue; Moomin Graphics used Hand-lettering in speech balloons and captions, the newspaper comic-strip tradition and Old-style book serif for the running text of the novels, the classic book-typography tradition

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Ligne Claire, with a counter-accent from Moomin Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife)

#fbf6e9 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#f0b73a accent · 18%
#d2483a accent · 14%
#e6c26a accent · 10%
#3b6fb6 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbf6e9;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #f0b73a;
  --accent-2: #d2483a;
  --accent-3: #e6c26a;
  --accent-4: #3b6fb6;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Comic Neue", cursive;
}

Use it with care

Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line): Tintin and his companions and Blake and Mortimer are copyrighted characters whose rights are actively enforced (Hergé's by Tintinimaginatio, called Moulinsart until 2022), and Swarte, Floc'h and Meulen are working artists: draw your own characters, settings and lettering in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for these artists or characters by name, and never present a generated picture as theirs. The style's clarity does not neutralise its early content: Tintin in the Congo caricatures Congolese people as childlike in a colonial frame, and The Shooting Star, serialised in the German-controlled Le Soir in 1941–42, made its villain an antisemitic caricature of a Jewish financier (renamed in 1954). Simplify every character with the same economy as the lead, and never use exaggerated lips, noses, skin colour or dress as ethnic markers.

Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife): The Moomin characters, names and drawings are protected and licensed by the Jansson family's company; use the drawing approach (fine ink line, round figures, hatched landscape, one or two soft colours) rather than copying the characters or implying an official Moomin product.

The two styles

A comic-style poster titled “THE LOST MAP” follows a dark-haired young explorer with a yellow backpack as he studies a map, visits a harbor, climbs a rocky path, and opens a stone chest. A large panel shows him overlooking a blue coastal bay with boats and a hilltop village crowned by a tower.

1929–present · Western Europe, Southern Europe Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) The comic drawing style of Hergé's Tintin and the Brussels school, named 'klare lijn' by Joost Swarte in 1977. One even, unhatched contour closes every figure and object, and flat, bright colour fills it without shading. Caricatural characters stand in researched, realistically drawn streets, machines and landscapes, all evenly lit and equally legible. Revived from the late 1970s by Swarte, Chaland, Floc'h and Ted Benoit, it left the album page for posters, record sleeves, magazine covers, murals and advertising, often in a knowing 1950s-retro key. 1945–present · Northern Europe, Global / networked Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife) The pen-and-ink world of Tove Jansson's Moomin books (1945-1977) and newspaper strip (1947-1975): round, white, snouted trolls drawn in a sure, fine black line, small against hatched forests, seas and night skies, in strips of framed panels with hand-lettered balloons. Her drawings are small and mostly black ink on white paper, with a second, full-colour gouache mode in three picture books. Since 1990 Arabia's mugs and other licensed goods adapt single drawings onto white grounds with one or two soft flat colours, turning one artist's hand into a living graphic system.