Style combination · Contrasts

Northwest Coast Formline Design × Javanese Wayang Kulit

Both identify beings by fixed diagnostic features, but formline splits and splays its creature symmetrically to fill the field, while wayang keeps the figure in profile and alone on an empty screen.

From the research on Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)

Mix them and make something Northwest Coast Formline Design Javanese Wayang Kulit

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Javanese Wayang Kulit, their arrangement from Northwest Coast Formline Design, 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.

Northwest Coast Formline Design Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)

Type from Javanese Wayang Kulit
Colour from Northwest Coast Formline Design: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Javanese Wayang Kulit: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Northwest Coast Formline Design: Central symmetry
Horror vacui
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 · Javanese Wayang Kulit

Civic

Yatra One; Javanese Wayang Kulit used Aksara Jawa (hanacaraka), the Javanese script of court manuscripts, whose illustrated narrative poems draw their figures in wayang style and Noto Sans Javanese (the Noto Javanese project, SIL Open Font License) for setting character names and captions in aksara Jawa

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 Javanese Wayang Kulit. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Northwest Coast Formline Design Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)

#efe9dd ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#a8261d accent · 18%
#b98a5e accent · 14%
#3b7a74 accent · 10%
#5b2f6e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe9dd;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #a8261d;
  --accent-2: #b98a5e;
  --accent-3: #3b7a74;
  --accent-4: #5b2f6e;
  --font-display: "Yatra One", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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.

Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging): Wayang kulit is a living Javanese theatre and craft, on UNESCO's intangible heritage list (proclaimed 2003, inscribed 2008): its puppets are made by carvers and painters for working dalang, and some performances are rites, such as the ruwatan exorcism held for children born under unlucky circumstances. Every figure is a particular character whose eyes, nose, head tilt, stance, size and face colour carry meaning, so do not assemble invented characters from mixed features or use a puppet as generic 'exotic' decoration. Semar, father of the other panakawan, is said to be the god Sang Hyang Ismaya in human form and is held by some to be the most sacred figure of the set, so do not reduce him to a clown or mascot. Never use kasar features such as fangs, red faces and bulging eyes to caricature real people, ethnic or religious groups. Commission or credit Javanese carvers and dalang rather than tracing museum puppets, many of which left Java under colonial rule. Do not sell printed or machine-cut copies as hand-carved tatah sungging, and never present a generated figure as a real wayang character.

The two styles

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. 1500–present · Southeast Asia Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging) The visual language of Javanese shadow puppets: flat figures cut from buffalo parchment, with head and legs in profile, shoulders turned to the front and long jointed arms worked by horn rods. Their insides are punched into filigree that draws costume and jewellery in light on the screen; both faces are painted in stepped colour gradations and gilded, for viewers on the puppeteer's side. Eyes, nose, head tilt, stance, size and face colour code each character as refined, strong, coarse or comic (the much-loved panakawan clowns); the leaf-shaped gunungan opens and closes the play.