Style combination · Pairs well
Punk × Vorticism
Use BLAST's blast-and-bless lists, vertical rules and boxed numbers as the skeleton of a manifesto zine, then photocopy it so the heavy caps fill in and roughen.
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.
Punk & DIY Zine Vorticism & BLAST Typography
- Type from Vorticism
- Colour from Punk
- Form from Vorticism
- Composition from Punk
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Vorticism avoids collage & layering: this is where the two pull against each other.
- Surface from Punk
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Vorticism
No!
Archivo Black; Vorticism used Grotesque No. 9 (Stephenson Blake), the heavy jobbing grotesque of most of BLAST's manifesto pages and Latin Bold for the boxed section numerals of the manifesto
Text · Punk
The graphic voice of punk rock in fanzines, record sleeves and gig flyers: images and words cut from newspapers, typed or scrawled, pasted down and run off on a photocopier. Deliberate crudeness, ransom-note lettering and hijacked mass-media imagery turned cheap reproduction into an anti-professional statement of autonomy and dissent.
Courier Prime; Punk used Ransom-note cut-out lettering and Typewriter faces
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Punk, with a counter-accent from Vorticism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Punk & DIY Zine Vorticism & BLAST Typography
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#f2efe6ground · 36% -
#0d0d0dink · 14% -
#ff2fa0accent · 18% -
#e8b62caccent · 14% -
#d7191caccent · 10% -
#8c8c8caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2efe6;
--ink: #0d0d0d;
--accent-1: #ff2fa0;
--accent-2: #e8b62c;
--accent-3: #d7191c;
--accent-4: #8c8c8c;
--font-display: "Archivo Black", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Courier Prime", monospace;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Punk
- Russian Constructivism Pairs well · Borrow Constructivist diagonals and red-and-black bars to give punk collage the agitprop structure post-punk sleeves later adopted.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Run punk collages through a riso in fluoro pink and black to keep the DIY ethic while gaining richer, layered colour.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Deface a clean corporate identity with xerox collage to make the critique of polish and authority explicit.
- Frutiger Aero Contrasts · Glossy optimism is everything punk rejects; one torn xerox fragment on an aero gradient reads as instant sabotage.
- Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Contrasts · Both mix found type with appropriated pictures, but punk tears and photocopies while Fluxus keeps a clean offset black, justified blocks and a tight edge-to-edge grid; use the Fluxus version when cheap materials should still look ordered.
- Natural Wine Label Art Pairs well · Alice Feiring calls the earlier natural-wine scene punk rock: of Gut Oggau she says 'This is where things grow up and stop being so punk rock' (Punch, 2021). Take punk's refusal of professional polish but drop the collage and the anger: one felt-pen picture on a white label carries the same do-it-yourself stance in a friendlier voice.
- Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective) Contrasts · Both scribble over photographs, but punk's photocopied blacks and ransom-note type are cheap and nihilist, while Grapus prints bright offset colour, mostly on white, in an optimistic, party-backed voice.
- Situationist Détournement Graphics Contrasts · Punk reprised the situationist prank in the late 1970s, but it packs torn photocopies and mixed type into crowded pages; détournement keeps a few recognisable fragments and lets each one say the opposite of what it said. Borrow the rewritten balloon when a punk layout needs a sharper argument.
With Vorticism
- London Transport Design Pairs well · Set a Vorticist field of angular planes under calm, evenly spaced lettering for a poster that has machine-age energy but still reads as a public service.
- Italian Futurism Contrasts · Its parent scatters words in freedom along curves and diagonals; Vorticism keeps the same shouting sizes on level, stacked lines, so decide whether the page should explode or stand like a wall.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · BLAST refused 'a revival of lost folk art' and blasted the 'years 1837 to 1900'; set its hard black shards against a hand-printed floral page to stage machine against handicraft.
- Russian Constructivism Pairs well · Both shout in bold grotesque capitals with heavy rules; add Constructivist photomontage and a red second ink when a Vorticist page has to sell one clear message rather than a list of quarrels.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) Pairs well · Wadsworth's dazzle camouflage came back on OMD's Dazzle Ships sleeve (1983): print the angular dazzle bands behind a die-cut or panelled sleeve and keep the type in small, spaced grotesque capitals.
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) Contrasts · Both set heavy jobbing grotesque with thick rules and bars in a little magazine, BLAST in 1914 and Klaxon in 1922; BLAST shouts lists beside machine abstractions, Klaxon keeps one quiet cover forme, jokes about the sonnet trade and draws figures in contour.