Style combination · Pairs well

NSK Retro-Avant-Garde × Post-Punk Record Sleeve

Both quote an earlier image whole on a quiet or dark field and let a coded title do the rest; borrow Saville's restraint to make an NSK-style quotation read as a designed object rather than a provocation.

From the research on NSK Retro-Avant-Garde

Mix them and make something NSK Retro-Avant-Garde Post-Punk Record Sleeve

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from NSK Retro-Avant-Garde, their arrangement from NSK Retro-Avant-Garde, the finish from Post-Punk Record Sleeve. 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.

NSK Retro-Avant-Garde Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

Type from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
All caps
Colour from NSK Retro-Avant-Garde: Monochrome
Dark ground
Form from NSK Retro-Avant-Garde: Emblems & badges
Geometric primitives
Composition from NSK Retro-Avant-Garde: Central symmetry
Single focal point
Surface from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Grain & noise
Flat

The type

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

Display · Post-Punk Record Sleeve

Memory

Syne; Post-Punk Record Sleeve used Peter Saville's colour-coded alphabet, one coloured block per letter, decoded by a wheel on the back of Power, Corruption & Lies (1983) and used for the title of Blue Monday and Small, ordered sans-serif capitals in the manner of Jan Tschichold's New Typography, which Saville took as his model from the 1978 Factory poster onwards

Text · NSK Retro-Avant-Garde

The retro-avant-garde of Neue Slowenische Kunst, founded in Ljubljana in 1984 by Laibach, IRWIN and the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre, with Novi kolektivizem as its design department. Its posters, emblems, flags and NSK State passports lift socialist-realist, Nazi, religious and Suprematist images whole, join incompatible symbols in solemn, centred heraldry, and over-identify with power instead of mocking it. The 1987 Youth Day poster, reworked from a Nazi painting, is the best-known case.

Archivo; NSK Retro-Avant-Garde used Heavy block sans capitals for the name LAIBACH on the 1980 Thrower posters and Constructed mixed-case display capitals of the 'NEUE SLOWENISCHE KUNST' wordmark under the NSK coat of arms

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from NSK Retro-Avant-Garde, with a counter-accent from Post-Punk Record Sleeve. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

NSK Retro-Avant-Garde Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

#121212 ground · 36%
#ebe5d6 ink · 14%
#b31b1b accent · 18%
#f2c230 accent · 14%
#8c8c88 accent · 10%
#b8963e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #121212;
  --ink: #ebe5d6;
  --accent-1: #b31b1b;
  --accent-2: #f2c230;
  --accent-3: #8c8c88;
  --accent-4: #b8963e;
  --font-display: "Syne", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

NSK Retro-Avant-Garde: NSK's sources include Nazi propaganda, and its emblem incorporates John Heartfield's swastika of axes: taken out of its context such imagery reads as endorsement rather than critique, and showing Nazi symbols is restricted by law in Germany and several other countries. The black cross, the NSK coat of arms and the NSK passport belong to living artists who still use them, so do not copy them. Make a new quotation from public-domain state imagery, and only for a setting that can carry the provocation and make its critical frame clear. The NSK passport, an art project that is not valid for travel, has been taken for a real document: there are stories of holders crossing a border on one when their Bosnian passport failed in the 1990s, and by 2007 a growing number of applicants from one town in Nigeria treated it, in IRWIN's words, as 'a viable document'. Never make a mock passport, ID card, stamp or banknote that could be mistaken for, or used as, a real state document.

Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD): The sleeves are in copyright, and several of their quoted images have their own authors, such as Harold Craft's pulsar plot and Bernard Pierre Wolff's photograph of the Appiani tomb: make a new quotation from a public-domain or licensed source rather than copying a Factory, Stiff or 4AD cover or its colour code.

The two styles

A distressed black, red and cream poster headed “UNION” shows a muscular bare-chested man gripping an upright sword, backed by a red circle inside a cogwheel. Mirrored wheat stalks, angular industrial forms and radiating bands surround him, with a globe and oak branches at the bottom.

1980–present · Central Europe, Southern Europe NSK Retro-Avant-Garde The retro-avant-garde of Neue Slowenische Kunst, founded in Ljubljana in 1984 by Laibach, IRWIN and the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre, with Novi kolektivizem as its design department. Its posters, emblems, flags and NSK State passports lift socialist-realist, Nazi, religious and Suprematist images whole, join incompatible symbols in solemn, centred heraldry, and over-identify with power instead of mocking it. The 1987 Youth Day poster, reworked from a Nazi painting, is the best-known case. 1977–1990 · Western Europe Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD. Instead of xerox collage, a sleeve became an art-directed object: one quoted or treated image (a pulsar plot, a Fantin-Latour still life, a Futurist poster, a misty photograph) on a quiet field or edge to edge, the band's name shrunk, coded or left off, riddles and catalogue numbers in its place, printed offset on textured, silver, gold or die-cut stock.