Style combination · Contrasts
Ligne Claire × Push Pin Style
Push Pin also draws in outline and flat colour, but mixes revived Victorian and Art Nouveau display faces, ornament and distortion; switch to ligne claire for one disciplined line, no ornament and evenly legible scenes.
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.
Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Push Pin Style
- Type from Push Pin Style
- Colour from Ligne Claire
- Form from Ligne Claire
- Composition from Ligne Claire
- Surface from Push Pin Style
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Ligne Claire
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.
Comic Neue; Ligne Claire used Bold hand-drawn capitals for titles and Heavy hand-drawn display capitals
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Ligne Claire, with a counter-accent from Push Pin Style. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Push Pin Style
-
#fbf6e9ground · 36% -
#1a1a1aink · 14% -
#f0b73aaccent · 18% -
#d8352aaccent · 14% -
#3b6fb6accent · 10% -
#9cc3e0accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #fbf6e9;
--ink: #1a1a1a;
--accent-1: #f0b73a;
--accent-2: #d8352a;
--accent-3: #3b6fb6;
--accent-4: #9cc3e0;
--font-display: "Righteous", sans-serif;
--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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Ligne Claire
- Lianhuanhua Picture-Story Books Contrasts · Both tell stories in outlined drawings; lianhuanhua gives each pocket-sized page one framed black-ink picture with a caption and keeps colour for the cover, ligne claire fills tiered multi-panel pages with balloons and flat, bright colour, caricatural figures in realistic settings.
- Flat Design Pairs well · Flat, unshaded fields translate directly to screen; add ligne claire's even outline and documented settings to flat UI illustration for scenes with more narrative and character, keeping ligne claire's perspective, which flat design avoids.
- Googie & Atomic Age Pairs well · The 1980s revival's 'atomic style' (Swarte's 1977 name for the 1950s Marcinelle school of Spirou, above all Jijé's early work, which Ever Meulen and Yves Chaland remade, with Franquin among Chaland's models; its figures rounder and more dynamic than Hergé's static, schematic line) drew on the optimism and futurism of the 1950s; Googie's boomerangs, starbursts, atoms and roadside signs suit a clear-line street scene or poster, drawn with ligne claire's even contour.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Hergé admired Roy Lichtenstein, but pop art blows single comic panels up, with enlarged Ben-Day dots and irony; choose ligne claire when the picture should tell a story legibly across a page, in flat, dot-free colour, rather than comment on mass media.
- City Pop Illustration Pairs well · Eizin Suzuki drew his city-pop sleeves and FM Station covers in a ligne-claire manner likened to Hergé's, rendering gradation in solid lines; pair them for a sunlit resort or street scene drawn in clear line under a deep blue sky, keeping ligne claire's unshaded colour.
- Korean Webtoon Graphics Contrasts · Both tell stories in outlined character art; webtoon scrolls one vertical strip on a phone with painterly gradients and brushwork, ligne claire tiers framed panels on a printed page in flat, unshaded colour.
- Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints Pairs well · Hergé absorbed Chinese and Japanese woodcuts while researching The Blue Lotus, some of his seascapes recall Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the style was also influenced by Japan's shin-hanga prints; borrow ukiyo-e's waves, skies and outlined flat colour for a clear-line landscape.
- Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting Pairs well · Both keep a sequential story readable with an even, unmodulated contour and flat colour, without hatching or modelling; borrow the codex's red-guideline reading path for a clear-line page, as a formal analogy rather than a lineage.
With Push Pin Style
- Psychedelic Poster Pairs well · Both revive Art Nouveau lettering; add Push Pin's clean contour and wit to tame psychedelic excess into readable posters.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Push Pin defined itself against Helvetica neutrality; pit a bespoke illustrated letterform against a Swiss grid to dramatise personality versus system.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Generic, faceless corporate figures are the opposite of Push Pin's authored characters; use Push Pin to restore a distinct illustrative voice.
- Belle Époque Lithographic Poster Pairs well · Borrow Chéret's dancing figures alongside Push Pin's revived display faces for exuberant entertainment graphics.
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Pairs well · Push Pin revives old styles through drawn figures and Lubalin through the letters themselves; pair a Push Pin illustration with a swash, tightly kerned Lubalin headline for full 1970s New York warmth.
- UPA & Cartoon Modern Contrasts · Its New York contemporary shared UPA's comic, distorted figures and irony but went the opposite way on ornament: Push Pin piled on revived Victorian and Art Nouveau lettering, borders and ornament, while UPA stripped the picture to a figure, a line and a flat field.
- Angura Theatre Poster Pairs well · Yokoo started from Push Pin's illustrated eclecticism; pair Push Pin's period-pastiche lettering with angura's crowded Japanese ephemera.
- Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism Contrasts · Same city and years, opposite method: Push Pin draws figures and revives Victorian display letters, while Blue Note crops a photograph and sets one grotesque huge.