Style combination · Contrasts

Moomin Graphics × Simplicissimus Satirical Style

Jansson drew political satire for the Finland-Swedish magazine Garm in the broad European satirical-magazine tradition that Simplicissimus led; Moomin keeps a sure pen line but drops the upward-aimed attack and the grotesque body for round, gentle figures.

From the research on Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife)

Mix them and make something Moomin Graphics Simplicissimus Satirical Style

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Moomin Graphics, their arrangement from Moomin Graphics, the finish from Moomin Graphics. 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.

Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife) Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich)

Type from Simplicissimus Satirical Style: Blackletter
Hand-lettering

Moomin Graphics avoids blackletter: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Colour from Simplicissimus Satirical Style: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Moomin Graphics: Rounded & pill
Stylised figuration
Composition from Moomin Graphics: Sequential narrative
Framed panels
Surface from Moomin Graphics

The type

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

Display · Simplicissimus Satirical Style

Wow

UnifrakturMaguntia, standing in for Set Fraktur for the title centred above each drawing and for the parenthetical artist credit ('(Zeichnung von Rudolf Wilke)', '(Th. Th. Heine)')

Text · Moomin Graphics

The pen-and-ink world of Tove Jansson's Moomin books (1945-1977) and newspaper strip (1947-1975): round, white, snouted trolls drawn in a sure, fine black line, small against hatched forests, seas and night skies, in strips of framed panels with hand-lettered balloons. Her drawings are small and mostly black ink on white paper, with a second, full-colour gouache mode in three picture books. Since 1990 Arabia's mugs and other licensed goods adapt single drawings onto white grounds with one or two soft flat colours, turning one artist's hand into a living graphic system.

Comic Neue; Moomin Graphics used Hand-lettering in speech balloons and captions, the newspaper comic-strip tradition and Old-style book serif for the running text of the novels, the classic book-typography tradition

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Simplicissimus Satirical Style, with a counter-accent from Moomin Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife) Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich)

#f0e6cc ground · 36%
#1b1a18 ink · 14%
#c4382c accent · 18%
#d6a444 accent · 14%
#e6c26a accent · 10%
#c85d80 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e6cc;
  --ink: #1b1a18;
  --accent-1: #c4382c;
  --accent-2: #d6a444;
  --accent-3: #e6c26a;
  --accent-4: #c85d80;
  --font-display: "UnifrakturMaguntia", serif;
  --font-text: "Comic Neue", cursive;
}

Use it with care

Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife): The Moomin characters, names and drawings are protected and licensed by the Jansson family's company; use the drawing approach (fine ink line, round figures, hatched landscape, one or two soft colours) rather than copying the characters or implying an official Moomin product.

Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich): Its caricature works by types, and that cuts both ways. Some pages drew colonised Africans as caricatures even when the target was the colonisers (Heine's Kolonialmächte, 1904). From August 1914 the magazine backed the war and turned its satire on the enemy nations, including racist pictures of non-European and Russian troops, and in the Weimar years it still ran nationalist jokes against the Allied victors and France. After 1933 it followed the Nazi line, including antisemitic satire, while Heine, hated by the Nazis not least for his Jewish origin, was forced out and fled. Several of its canonical draughtsmen served the regime: Hitler made Thöny an honorary professor in 1938 and put him on the Gottbegnadeten list in 1944; Schilling, a fierce critic of the Nazis before 1933, became their propagandist; and in the last issue of September 1944 Gulbransson, Schilling and Thöny supplied propaganda drawings. Take the method of 1896–1914 and 1919–1933 (one framed drawing, flat tints, a spoken punchline) and aim it at power. Exaggerate the uniform, bearing and costume of the powerful, not ethnicity, religion, disability or the bodies of the powerless. The profiteer, the usurer and the octopus gripping its victims (Heine's Der Wucher, 1923) were also stock antisemitic codes in these years, so mark a profiteer by class (top hat, monocle, fur collar), never by ethnic features. Gulbransson (d. 1958), George Grosz (d. 1959) and Bruno Paul (d. 1968) are still in copyright in the EU, until the end of 2028, 2029 and 2038; Heine's work has been public domain there since 2019. Draw your own, do not present a new design as a Simplicissimus page, and do not use the bulldog as a mark.

The two styles

1945–present · Northern Europe, Global / networked Moomin Graphics (Tove Jansson's Pen-Drawn World and its Licensed Afterlife) The pen-and-ink world of Tove Jansson's Moomin books (1945-1977) and newspaper strip (1947-1975): round, white, snouted trolls drawn in a sure, fine black line, small against hatched forests, seas and night skies, in strips of framed panels with hand-lettered balloons. Her drawings are small and mostly black ink on white paper, with a second, full-colour gouache mode in three picture books. Since 1990 Arabia's mugs and other licensed goods adapt single drawings onto white grounds with one or two soft flat colours, turning one artist's hand into a living graphic system.

An oversized, stout man in a top hat and red waistcoat smokes a cigar while standing on a mound of gold coins. Poorly dressed workers reach toward him from below, with smoking factory chimneys and a domed building silhouetted behind them beneath the heading “Fortschritt.”

1896–1944 · Central Europe Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich) The house style of the Munich satirical weekly Simplicissimus, set by Th. Th. Heine, Eduard Thöny, Bruno Paul, Rudolf Wilke and Olaf Gulbransson. Each page is one drawing that is the joke: an officer, priest, junker, profiteer or minister in a sure contour, black silhouettes and two or three flat tints inside a ruled frame, with a Fraktur title above and a punchline, usually spoken, below. It turned the Jugendstil line from ornament to caricature, and the 1898 Palestine issue brought confiscation and prison sentences for Heine and Wedekind.