Style combination · Pairs well
Pacific Barkcloth Design × International Typographic Style
A ruled grid already underlies ngatu; set text in a neutral grotesque within the same squares for exhibition and institutional graphics made with tapa makers.
Mix them and make something Pacific Barkcloth Design International Typographic Style
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.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design International Typographic Style
- Type from International Typographic Style
- Colour from International Typographic Style
- Form from Pacific Barkcloth Design
- Composition from Pacific Barkcloth Design
- Surface from Pacific Barkcloth Design
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Pacific Barkcloth Design
Barkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures. Motifs are transferred rather than simply drawn: rubbed over pattern boards in Tonga and Samoa, stencilled in Fiji, stamped in Hawai'i, then sharpened by hand. The palette is earth browns and soot black on cream bark, inside ruled squares and bands on cloths that can run past twenty metres.
Archivo; Pacific Barkcloth Design used Freehand-painted numerals and capitals on ngatu, from length markers to commemorative inscriptions and Faces with full support for Tongan, Samoan, Fijian and Hawaiian orthographies (ʻokina and macrons), e.g. Noto Sans, for accompanying text
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from Pacific Barkcloth Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design International Typographic Style
-
#f2f0e9ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#e1251baccent · 18% -
#b9772faccent · 14% -
#1f4e9caccent · 10% -
#8a3b1faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2f0e9;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #e1251b;
--accent-2: #b9772f;
--accent-3: #1f4e9c;
--accent-4: #8a3b1f;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design: Tapa is women's ceremonial wealth, made collectively and presented at weddings, funerals and the investiture of chiefly titles; particular motifs commemorate events, lineages and royalty, and some designs belong to families, villages or chiefly lines. Commission and pay tapa makers and their work groups (such as the koka'anga in Tonga), credit the island and the maker, and do not lift motifs from museum cloths onto products or treat Tongan, Samoan, Fijian and Hawaiian traditions as one interchangeable 'Polynesian' pattern.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Pacific Barkcloth Design
- Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems Pairs well · Both are gridded ceremonial cloths of named motifs; borrow their shared square-by-square logic for a layout, while keeping each motif tied to its own culture and meaning.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Two earth-toned inks on cream stock and a slightly broken, rubbed impression give print work tapa's material warmth without copying its motifs.
- Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design Contrasts · Kōwhaiwhai flows in curvilinear koru bands while tapa is ruled into squares filled with angular repeats, a reminder that 'Pacific pattern' is not one style.
- Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop) Contrasts · Tiki menus borrowed tapa-like zigzag bands as mere borders; real ngatu, siapo and kapa are women's ceremonial wealth with named motifs, so set the two side by side to see what was flattened, and commission tapa makers rather than copying their patterns.
With International Typographic Style
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Ornamental curves against an orthogonal grid make a strong deliberate tension.
- Brutalist Web Design Pairs well · Strip the grid to raw HTML defaults to get a rawer, contemporary take on Swiss honesty.
- Psychedelic Poster Contrasts · Its exact opposite on legibility; borrow one swirling element to break a too-cold Swiss layout.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Add Japanese restraint and emblematic colour fields to the grid for warmth without losing order.
- American Traditional Tattoo Flash Contrasts · Rational grid and sans-serif against sentimental, hand-lettered emblems: one flash motif on a Swiss layout makes a sharp contrast.
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Contrasts · Put a single tag or throw-up over a strict Swiss grid to stage the clash between institutional order and a street voice.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Set one loud appropriated Pop image inside a strict grid with a neutral grotesque so the irony reads as deliberate rather than chaotic.
- Italian Painted Film Poster (Rome Studios) Contrasts · Grid, restraint and photographic objectivity are the opposite of a crowded painted montage.