Stylogeny combining Lucerne Poster Scene × Neo-Swiss Revival

Try

Style combination · Contrasts

Lucerne Poster Scene × Neo-Swiss Revival

Neo-Swiss keeps the grotesque intact on a modular grid for identities and the web; Lucerne keeps the grotesque only for the small print and distorts the title itself, poster by poster. Choose neo-Swiss for a system, Lucerne for a one-off event.

From the research on Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters)

Mix them and make something Lucerne Poster Scene Neo-Swiss Revival

GridLucerne Poster Scene × Neo-Swiss Revival
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Lucerne Poster Scene, their arrangement from Lucerne Poster Scene, the finish from Lucerne Poster Scene. Not a real work, and not an image of either 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.

Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters) Neo-Swiss Revival

Type from Neo-Swiss Revival
Colour from Neo-Swiss Revival
Form from Lucerne Poster Scene
Composition from Lucerne Poster Scene
Surface from Lucerne Poster Scene

02

The type

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

Display · Neo-Swiss Revival

Grid

Inter Tight, standing in for Neue Haas Grotesk (Christian Schwartz revival)

Text · Lucerne Poster Scene

Lucerne's poster culture for small non-commercial venues (Südpol, Neubad, Treibhaus) and the Weltformat festival. Each event gets a one-off poster, most often with the title as the picture: letters built, twisted or warped into one optical motif. Neubad's posters are black and white only; Felix Pfäffli's Südpol series (2010–2015) added Risograph colour. The scene rests on local designers' exchange, fostered by Brechbühl through Weltformat (co-founded 2009) and the Show & Tell meetings (2012); in 2015, 26 of the 100 best posters from Germany, Austria and Switzerland came from the Lucerne area.

Space Grotesk; Lucerne Poster Scene used Letters constructed or distorted for each poster and The Südpol typeface drawn by Erich Brechbühl in 2008 from the letterforms of the signage of the old slaughterhouse, used for the SÜDPOL wordmark that recurs, in varying positions, on the Südpol posters

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Neo-Swiss Revival, with a counter-accent from Lucerne Poster Scene. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters) Neo-Swiss Revival

  • #f5f5f0 ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #ff4a1c accent · 18%
  • #ff415b accent · 14%
  • #1d3bff accent · 10%
  • #744dc9 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f5f5f0;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #ff4a1c;
  --accent-2: #ff415b;
  --accent-3: #1d3bff;
  --accent-4: #744dc9;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Space Grotesk", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

Huge black letters spell “RUND” above “GANG” on a white background. The letters bend inward into nested black-and-white curves around a small green semicircle near the centre. 2007–present · Central Europe Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters) Lucerne's poster culture for small non-commercial venues (Südpol, Neubad, Treibhaus) and the Weltformat festival. Each event gets a one-off poster, most often with the title as the picture: letters built, twisted or warped into one optical motif. Neubad's posters are black and white only; Felix Pfäffli's Südpol series (2010–2015) added Risograph colour. The scene rests on local designers' exchange, fostered by Brechbühl through Weltformat (co-founded 2009) and the Show & Tell meetings (2012); in 2015, 26 of the 100 best posters from Germany, Austria and Switzerland came from the Lucerne area. A typographic arts poster features enormous black words “New” and “Now” stacked on an off-white background divided by thin grid lines. Orange-red, blue and pale gray rectangular fields sit below, alongside smaller exhibition details and the words “Art Ideas People Today.” 2005–present · Global / networked, Central Europe, Western Europe Neo-Swiss Revival A contemporary revival of the International Typographic Style, fuelled by digital re-releases of neo-grotesques and by studios such as Experimental Jetset and Norm: modular grids, flush-left grotesque type, huge tightly set headlines and flat fields of black, white and one signal colour. It treats Swiss modernism as a living toolkit for posters, identities and the responsive web, sometimes with a knowing, citational wink.

05

More combinations

With Lucerne Poster Scene

With Neo-Swiss Revival

All 14 combinations with Neo-Swiss Revival

Every style combination