Style combination · Contrasts

Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting × Northwest Coast Formline Design

Both are Indigenous American sign systems of contour and flat colour, but formline swells and tapers its line into ovoids and U-forms in symmetric crests, while the codex keeps an even, unmodulated contour around profile figures strung along a guided reading path; do not merge them as generic 'Native' art.

From the research on Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting

Mix them and make something Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting Northwest Coast Formline Design

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting, their arrangement from Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting, the finish from Northwest Coast Formline Design. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting Northwest Coast Formline Design

Type from Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting
Colour from Northwest Coast Formline Design: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting: Stylised figuration
Pictogram
Composition from Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from Northwest Coast Formline Design: Carved line
Flat

The type

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

Display · Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting

Atlas

Fira Sans, standing in for For accompanying text, a sturdy humanist sans with full diacritic support (e.g. Noto Sans) for Spanish and Mixtec (Tu'un Savi) orthographies, never a novelty 'Aztec' display font

Text · Northwest Coast Formline Design

The two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast nations, painted, carved and woven onto boxes, house fronts, robes and hats, and printed as serigraphs since the 1960s. A continuous black primary formline that swells and tapers joins ovoids, U-forms and S-forms into hereditary crest beings, with red secondary lines and blue-green tertiary areas. The figure is split, splayed and compressed until it fills its field.

Archivo; Northwest Coast Formline Design used Hand-lettered captions and titling in Yahgulanaas's Haida Manga and Latin faces with full Lingít and X̱aad Kíl orthographic support (x̱, g̱, ḵ), e.g. Noto Sans, for accompanying text

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Northwest Coast Formline Design, with a counter-accent from Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting Northwest Coast Formline Design

#efe9dd ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#a8261d accent · 18%
#d49a2a accent · 14%
#b98a5e accent · 10%
#3b7a74 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe9dd;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #a8261d;
  --accent-2: #d49a2a;
  --accent-3: #b98a5e;
  --accent-4: #3b7a74;
  --font-display: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting: These books are Indigenous sacred and dynastic records: Mixtec speakers called them ñee ñuhu, 'sacred skins'; the Borgia Group almanacs set out deities and the ritual 260-day count, and the Mixtec histories record the genealogies of ruling houses whose Ñuu Dzaui (Mixtec) descendants live in Oaxaca, Puebla, Guerrero and the diaspora today. Almost all surviving books left Mexico during the conquest, the colonial period or the nineteenth century and are now in European libraries and museums; the Codex Colombino in Mexico City is a rare exception. 'Mixteca-Puebla' itself is an archaeologists' label, not a name the painters used: George Vaillant described a Mixteca-Puebla 'culture' or 'civilization', H. B. Nicholson redefined it as a style shared by Nahua and Mixtec artists, and its questions remain open. Do not lift deities, calendar signs or named rulers as decoration, logos or generic 'Aztec pattern', never invent pseudo-glyphs or present generated pages as historical, and work with Mixtec and Nahua scholars, artists and communities, crediting the codex and its people.

Northwest Coast Formline Design: Formline images are hereditary crests: the raven, eagle, killer whale, bear, beaver and other beings belong to particular clans, houses and lineages, their display is tied to rights validated at potlatches and feasts, and some designs and stories are restricted. The tradition belongs to the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian and Heiltsuk nations, not to a generic 'Pacific Northwest' style. Commission or license work from artists of those nations, credit them by name and nation, and never redraw crests or assemble pseudo-formline from ovoids and U-forms.

The two styles

An illustrated poster headed “NEW SEASONS” shows stacked scenes of stylized figures planting maize, carrying offerings, and kneeling beside crops and an altar. A large feathered serpent, rain clouds, birds, flowers, and patterned borders fill the cream, red, teal, yellow, and green design.

c. 1200–1560 · Latin America & Caribbean Mixteca-Puebla Codex Painting The painted screenfold books of Postclassic southern and central Mexico (not the Maya codices): long strips of gesso-coated deerskin, folded like a screen and painted on both sides. In the Mixtec histories red guidelines lead the reader in a zigzag through the deeds and marriages of rulers; in the divinatory Borgia Group, pages pair deities with periods of the 260-day count. Profile figures with large heads, glyphs for names, dates and places, and flat colour inside an even black contour make picture and writing one codified system. 1700–present · North America Northwest Coast Formline Design The two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast nations, painted, carved and woven onto boxes, house fronts, robes and hats, and printed as serigraphs since the 1960s. A continuous black primary formline that swells and tapers joins ovoids, U-forms and S-forms into hereditary crest beings, with red secondary lines and blue-green tertiary areas. The figure is split, splayed and compressed until it fills its field.