Stylogeny combining Memphis Design × Swiss Punk

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Style combination · Pairs well

Memphis Design × Swiss Punk

Add Memphis squiggles and pastel triangles to New Wave's floating bars for the full 1980s postmodern palette.

From the research on Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography

Mix them and make something Memphis Design Swiss Punk

Two angled cream strips bearing the large black words “SOUND” and “PLAY” cross a brightly coloured abstract background. Circles, turquoise triangles, zigzags, black squiggles, scattered bars and halftone dots fill the textured composition.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Swiss Punk, the form from Memphis Design, the composition from Swiss Punk. Not a real or historical work.

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.

Memphis Design Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography

Type from Swiss Punk
Colour from Memphis Design
Form from Memphis Design
Composition from Swiss Punk
Surface from Swiss Punk

02

The type

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

Display · Swiss Punk

Wow

Inter Tight, standing in for Akzidenz-Grotesk

Text · Memphis Design

The Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own. Clashing colours, speckles, squiggles, zigzags and primitive geometric shapes were combined with deliberate bad taste, mocking modernist good form while quoting 1950s kitsch, Pop and Art Deco.

Jost; Memphis Design used Futura and ITC Avant Garde Gothic

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Memphis Design, with a counter-accent from Swiss Punk. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Memphis Design Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography

  • #ffd23f ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #ff5a36 accent · 18%
  • #e6007e accent · 14%
  • #2ec4b6 accent · 10%
  • #0098d8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffd23f;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #ff5a36;
  --accent-2: #e6007e;
  --accent-3: #2ec4b6;
  --accent-4: #0098d8;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

A dense geometric pattern on a pink background combines turquoise polka-dot triangles, yellow squares with black dashes, blue circles with yellow sprinkles, orange-red zigzags, and scattered squiggles and small shapes. Bold black offset shapes give many motifs a shadowed, layered appearance. 1981–1988 · Southern Europe Memphis Design The Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own. Clashing colours, speckles, squiggles, zigzags and primitive geometric shapes were combined with deliberate bad taste, mocking modernist good form while quoting 1950s kitsch, Pop and Art Deco. 1968–1990 · Central Europe, North America Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography A rebellion from inside the Swiss school: Wolfgang Weingart and his Basel students kept the grotesque and the grid but set them in motion with extreme letterspacing, stepped and angled lines, rules and bars, enlarged halftone screens and layered film montage. Carried to the US by April Greiman, Dan Friedman and others, it became an intuitive, textured counterpoint to corporate modernism and a bridge to digital postmodern typography.

05

More combinations

With Memphis Design

All 17 combinations with Memphis Design

With Swiss Punk

Every style combination