Stylogeny combining Mavo × Taishō Roman

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Style combination · Contrasts

Mavo × Taishō Roman

The same Taishō Tokyo in two moods: pastel lyrical illustration of modern girls against Mavo's black linocuts, newsprint and price tags.

From the research on Mavo

Mix them and make something Mavo Taishō Roman

RoseMavo × Taishō Roman1923 · 1910
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Taishō Roman, their arrangement from Mavo, the finish from Mavo. 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.

Mavo Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

Type from Mavo
Colour from Taishō Roman

Mavo avoids pastel: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

Form from Taishō Roman
Composition from Mavo
Surface from Mavo

02

The type

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

Display · Mavo

Rose

Big Shoulders, standing in for Blocky hand-drawn masthead letters

Text · Taishō Roman

The lyrical illustration (jojōga) of late-Meiji to early-Shōwa Japan, led by Takehisa Yumeji: willowy, large-eyed women in kimono drawn with an Art Nouveau contour, set among camellias and kimono patterns and lettered by hand. Made for sheet-music covers, girls' magazines, postcards and paper goods, it is intimate and melancholic rather than ornamental, and its eyes and moods passed through Nakahara Jun'ichi into shōjo manga.

Shippori Mincho; Taishō Roman used Hand-drawn title lettering mixing kanji, kana and Latin and Brush-written kana for lyric poems

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Taishō Roman, with a counter-accent from Mavo. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Mavo Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

  • #f1e8d5 ground · 36%
  • #3b4a6b ink · 14%
  • #b8333a accent · 18%
  • #c9a548 accent · 14%
  • #d98b8f accent · 10%
  • #9bb39a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e8d5;
  --ink: #3b4a6b;
  --accent-1: #b8333a;
  --accent-2: #c9a548;
  --accent-3: #d98b8f;
  --accent-4: #9bb39a;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

04

The two styles

1923–1925 · East Asia Mavo Tokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925). Covers carry a huge hand-drawn title; inside, machine-set type collides with hand-drawn kanji, kana and Latin letters, some sideways or upside down, inside heavy black or red rules that box the page. Original linocuts of abstract machine forms sit on real newspaper sheets bound in as pages, some turned 90 degrees so horizontal newsprint crosses vertical text. One cover carried a firecracker. 1910–1940 · East Asia Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration The lyrical illustration (jojōga) of late-Meiji to early-Shōwa Japan, led by Takehisa Yumeji: willowy, large-eyed women in kimono drawn with an Art Nouveau contour, set among camellias and kimono patterns and lettered by hand. Made for sheet-music covers, girls' magazines, postcards and paper goods, it is intimate and melancholic rather than ornamental, and its eyes and moods passed through Nakahara Jun'ichi into shōjo manga.

05

More combinations

With Mavo

With Taishō Roman

All 11 combinations with Taishō Roman

Every style combination