Style combination · Contrasts
Newtro × Yuru-chara
Newtro reissues a firm's own decades-old mascot, polished; a yuru-chara is newly invented for a place and its looseness is left in.
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.
Newtro (Korean New-Retro) Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)
- Type from Newtro
- Colour from Newtro
- Form from Yuru-chara
- Composition from Yuru-chara
- Surface from Newtro
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Newtro
Yay!
Kaushan Script, standing in for Woowa Brothers' Euljiro (2019) and Euljiro 10 Years Later (2020), free Hangul fonts drawn from Euljiro signboard brush lettering
Text · Yuru-chara
Japan's local mascots: characters commissioned by prefectures, towns and tourism bodies to stand for a place, named yuru-kyara ('loose characters') by the illustrator Jun Miura around 2000. Each body is built from a local product, landmark or legend, such as Hikonyan's samurai helmet or Barysan's towel belly band, drawn as one frontal figure with a big head and a few flat colours, and lived out as a walk-about costume. Hikonyan (2007) set off the boom; Kumamon (2010), licensed free for goods that promote Kumamoto, made it an industry.
Zen Maru Gothic; Yuru-chara used Hand-drawn kana name lettering in thick, rounded strokes set beside the figure, spelling the mascot's name in hiragana or katakana, as in くまモン, ひこにゃん or バリィさん and Maru gothic (rounded gothic) Japanese type, such as Morisawa's Shin Maru Go, for captions, event banners and goods
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Newtro, with a counter-accent from Yuru-chara. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Newtro (Korean New-Retro) Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)
-
#f4ecd8ground · 36% -
#1c1c1cink · 14% -
#f0b929accent · 18% -
#e3242baccent · 14% -
#6ec1e4accent · 10% -
#1f58a8accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4ecd8;
--ink: #1c1c1c;
--accent-1: #f0b929;
--accent-2: #e3242b;
--accent-3: #6ec1e4;
--accent-4: #1f58a8;
--font-display: "Kaushan Script", cursive;
--font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Newtro (Korean New-Retro): Newtro revives a firm's own archive: for any other client draw on that client's history, not Jinro's toad or Gompyo's bear, which their owners guard. In 2023 the first cans of 7Bräu's Daepyo Wheat Beer, which kept Gompyo's colour scheme and a bear, drew Daehan Flour Mills' warning that copying the brand's design could be unfair competition, and 7Bräu promised a redesign with a tiger. Keep Hangul and Hanja correct and legible, and do not swap in Japanese Shōwa-retro or colonial-era 'Gyeongseong' imagery: a 2018 JoongAng Ilbo column called restaurants that mix Japanese food with Gyeongseong nostalgia 'tasteless', since those who lived through the occupation remember it as 'shameful and painful'.
Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design): Mascots are owned designs: Kumamon's copyright is held by Kumamoto Prefecture, which allows free use in Japan only with its permission and a displayed permit number, and Hikone and Hikonyan's illustrator fought over the character's rights from 2007 through mediation, a 2011 court ruling and a 2012 settlement, so invent an original character for each place and agree rights with the illustrator first. Keep sacred figures out of the joke: Buddhist groups in Nara objected that Sento-kun, a Buddha-like child with deer antlers, insulted the Buddha. And do not use a cute mascot to soften a contested public risk, as with the tritium mascot that Japan's Reconstruction Agency made to promote releasing treated water from Fukushima, pulled a day after its release in April 2021.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Newtro
- Out-of-Square Hangul Typography Contrasts · Set the modernist, geometric de-squared Hangul of Ahn Sang-soo against newtro's revived brush and cursive label lettering to show two ideas of fashionable Hangul.
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · Both dress a product in the past, but hipster badges invent a Victorian heritage for a new firm while newtro reissues a real firm's own recent archive.
- Synthwave / Outrun Contrasts · Synthwave imagines an eighties that never shipped, in neon gradients; newtro reprints packaging that actually sat on Korean shelves, in flat spot colours.
- Guochao (China-Chic National Trend) Contrasts · China's contemporary heritage trend draws on imperial and folk motifs in red and gold; newtro draws on late-twentieth-century consumer packaging and its mascots.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Newtro's lettering is borrowed from Korean signboards; pair a revived label with real sign-painted shopfronts, as Euljiro's cafés keep their old hardware-store signs.
- Kawaii Design Pairs well · Revived trademarks become cute merchandise and emoticons; push the toad or bear toward kawaii roundness for spin-offs while keeping the label's period lettering.
- Showa and Heisei Retro Revival (Japanese Packaging and Kissaten Graphics) Contrasts · Both revive old everyday graphics, but newtro is Korean heritage-brand reissue with badge-led logic, while this is Japanese katakana-led kissaten and dagashi graphics in pastel spot colour.
- Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu) Pairs well · Both turn a postwar household look into nostalgia for young buyers; pair a reissued retro label or mascot with a floral-cloth band for packaging that recalls a grandmother's home.
With Yuru-chara
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Contrasts · Postwar Japanese identities give institutions abstract, grid-built marks; a yuru-chara gives a prefecture a face, a name and a body that walks into festivals and shakes hands.
- Kamon (Japanese Family Crests) Pairs well · Borrow the place's own heraldry, a daimyō family crest or the town's emblem: a flat crest on the mascot's sash, banner or packaging anchors the loose figure in local history, as Hikonyan's helmet anchors it in the Ii family's red armour.
- Kawaii Design Contrasts · Both build on rounded, big-headed cute figures, but kawaii sells polished pastel fancy goods for private pleasure, while a yuru-chara speaks for a town in a few bold colours and keeps its awkwardness.
- Superflat Contrasts · Superflat turns Japanese character culture into gallery irony, crowded and cute-grotesque; yuru-chara keeps characters sincere, civic and plain, one figure at a time.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Corporate Memphis draws faceless, placeless figures for global platforms; a yuru-chara is a single named character built from one town's products and legends.
- Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals) Contrasts · Mascot design is exactly what a sealed pack must give up in Chile and Mexico; put the two side by side to show how much of a snack's appeal is carried by a character.
- Rubber-Hose Revival (Cartoon Mascot Graphics) Pairs well · Both build a mascot from the thing it promotes; borrow the yuru-chara's costume-ready frontal figure and licensing for a rubber-hose brand character.
- Natural Wine Label Art Pairs well · Super Glou's drunken-cat mascot and Jauma's cosmic cat work like local mascots; borrow the yuru-chara habit of one soft, recurring character who appears in a new scene for each product.