Stylogeny combining PC Music Graphics × Vaporwave

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Style combination · Contrasts

PC Music Graphics × Vaporwave

Both are ironic about consumer culture, but vaporwave collages faded pastel ruins of the 1990s, while PC Music renders one pristine new product.

From the research on PC Music Graphics

Mix them and make something PC Music Graphics Vaporwave

FINEPC Music Graphics × Vaporwave2013 · 2011
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from PC Music Graphics, their arrangement from PC Music Graphics, the finish from PC Music Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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.

PC Music Graphics Vaporwave

Type from Vaporwave
Colour from Vaporwave
Form from PC Music Graphics
Composition from PC Music Graphics
Surface from PC Music Graphics

02

The type

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

Display · Vaporwave

Fine

Syncopate, standing in for Full-width Latin text (ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ)

Text · PC Music Graphics

The release artwork of London's PC Music label (2013-2023) and its immediate circle (Diamond Wright, Sophie, Timothy Luke): early hyperpop that treats a song as a polished synthetic product, not the later glitchy, maximalist hyperpop. One object, often a 3D render or a retouched portrait, gleams on a plain ground: plastic, milled aluminium, a pink capsule, a blue disc. Ideas are taken literally and pushed until strange, with puns on brands and computer culture. Dazed called the look 'bouncy, shiny, commercial, plastic, unnatural, metallic'.

Inter; PC Music Graphics used Custom display lettering after Rudolf Koch and Berthold Wolpe, with a Renaissance, woodcut feel and Comic Sans and other early-web system defaults, quoted knowingly

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Vaporwave, with a counter-accent from PC Music Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

PC Music Graphics Vaporwave

  • #1a1040 ground · 36%
  • #fffb96 ink · 14%
  • #01cdfe accent · 18%
  • #f2ff1f accent · 14%
  • #05ffa1 accent · 10%
  • #e0151f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #1a1040;
  --ink: #fffb96;
  --accent-1: #01cdfe;
  --accent-2: #f2ff1f;
  --accent-3: #05ffa1;
  --accent-4: #e0151f;
  --font-display: "Syncopate", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

04

The two styles

A transparent heart-shaped bottle filled with pink liquid and bubbles sits on a white background, topped by a rounded clear cap and silver collar. Glossy pink balloon-like lettering spells “DREAMGEL” above it, with pink star-shaped glints above the lettering and on the cap. 2013–present · Western Europe, North America PC Music Graphics The release artwork of London's PC Music label (2013-2023) and its immediate circle (Diamond Wright, Sophie, Timothy Luke): early hyperpop that treats a song as a polished synthetic product, not the later glitchy, maximalist hyperpop. One object, often a 3D render or a retouched portrait, gleams on a plain ground: plastic, milled aluminium, a pink capsule, a blue disc. Ideas are taken literally and pushed until strange, with puns on brands and computer culture. Dazed called the look 'bouncy, shiny, commercial, plastic, unnatural, metallic'. A large classical sculpted head rises from a turquoise swimming pool beneath a striped yellow-pink sun, surrounded by palm trees, waterfalls, city buildings and tropical foliage. Floating computer windows, a dolphin, cherry blossoms, a compact disc and a wireframe globe fill the pink-and-purple sky beneath the title “DREAM POOL.” 2011–2017 · Global / networked, North America Vaporwave An internet-born microgenre and visual aesthetic that remixes the debris of late-20th-century consumer culture (Windows 95 dialogs, classical busts, palm trees, mall interiors, Japanese text, early 3D renders) in pastel pinks and cyans. Emerging around 2011 from records by James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Vektroid, it is at once nostalgic homage and deadpan critique of corporate optimism.

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More combinations

With PC Music Graphics

With Vaporwave

All 19 combinations with Vaporwave

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