Style combination · Pairs well
Phototype Expressive Typography × Push Pin Style
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.
Mix them and make something Phototype Expressive Typography Push Pin Style
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.
Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Push Pin Style
- Type from Phototype Expressive Typography
- Colour from Phototype Expressive Typography
- Form from Push Pin Style
- Composition from Phototype Expressive Typography
- 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.
Display · Phototype Expressive Typography
Pop
Josefin Sans, standing in for ITC Avant Garde Gothic (Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase, 1970; 33 alternate characters and interlocking capital ligatures)
Text · Push Pin Style
The eclectic illustrative style of New York's Push Pin Studios, founded by Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel. Against the neutrality of the Swiss style it raided Victorian wood type, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, comics and folk art, drawing everything with bold contours, flat colour and invented display lettering, and made illustration and personal wit central to graphic design again.
Archivo; Push Pin Style used Baby Teeth and Glaser Stencil
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Phototype Expressive Typography, with a counter-accent from Push Pin Style. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Push Pin Style
-
#f8f6f1ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#d1322baccent · 18% -
#f2b632accent · 14% -
#8a8479accent · 10% -
#2e86abaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f8f6f1;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #d1322b;
--accent-2: #f2b632;
--accent-3: #8a8479;
--accent-4: #2e86ab;
--font-display: "Josefin Sans", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Phototype Expressive Typography
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · Both pair a script with a geometric sans, but the craft badge tracks its capitals wide in a centred one-ink frame, while Lubalin kerns the same pairing until the letters touch and join. Set one against the other to decide whether the letters should breathe or fuse.
- Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism Pairs well · Same New York years and the same belief that the title can be the picture; give a Miles-style tinted photograph a Lubalin logotype whose letters touch and interlock instead of a plain blown-up grotesque.
- Emigre & Early Digital Type Contrasts · Both were made by a new type technology; Emigre's bitmap and PostScript faces end the phototype era, so set a Lubalin ligature against a coarse bitmap word to show how the tool shapes the letter.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Even spacing, flush-left grotesque and a grid against letters squeezed until they fuse into one centred logotype: put the two side by side to decide whether type should stay neutral or carry the joke.
- Di Tella Graphic Design (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella) Pairs well · Both made the word the picture in the same years; add Lubalin's tight, playful letter-joins to Di Tella's blunt flat-ink title for a headline-led identity.
- Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type) Contrasts · Both make new meaning by interlocking letters into ligatures, but Lubalin's phototype ligatures are tight-set display wit for headlines and logotypes, while post-binary ligatures carry gender inside the word, in running French text as well as on banners; choose Lubalin for a witty headline, post-binary glyphs when the grammar of the word is the message.
- Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Contrasts · Same New York years and the same habit of locking letters together until they touch, but Lubalin kerned polished phototype for advertising while Maciunas pressed leftover dry-transfer letters into puzzle monograms on kraft; choose between the commercial ligature and the scavenged one.
- Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering) Pairs well · Lubalin's phototype logotypes also merge neighbouring letters into ligatures and crowd them into a single shape; borrow vyaz's shared stems and nested small letters for a Cyrillic logotype, and keep it to one or two words so it stays readable.
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.
- 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.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · 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.
- 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.