Stylogeny combining Skateboard Deck Graphics × Underground Comix

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Style combination · Pairs well

Skateboard Deck Graphics × Underground Comix

Both draw distorted, humorous figures in ink; add a vertical single-image format and flat screenprint colours to move from comic page to deck.

From the research on Skateboard Deck Graphics

Mix them and make something Skateboard Deck Graphics Underground Comix

RIOTSkateboard Deck × Underground Comix
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Underground Comix, their arrangement from Skateboard Deck Graphics, the finish from Skateboard Deck Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either 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.

Skateboard Deck Graphics Underground Comix

Type from Underground Comix
Colour from Skateboard Deck Graphics
Form from Underground Comix
Composition from Skateboard Deck Graphics
Surface from Skateboard Deck Graphics

Underground Comix avoids flat: this is where the two pull against each other.

02

The type

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

Display · Underground Comix

Riot

Bangers, standing in for Pen-drawn balloon capitals (each cartoonist's own hand on the page, in the same pen as the drawing)

Text · Skateboard Deck Graphics

The graphics printed on the underside of skateboard decks, developed by Californian skate companies in the 1970s and 80s (the scope here; later photographic and parody decks are not covered). An artist-drawn image, usually a monster, skull, hand or cartoon figure in heavy ink outline, fills a tall vertical board in a few flat screenprinted colours, with a brand logo that repeats across a collectible series of models.

Archivo; Skateboard Deck Graphics used Santa Cruz logotype, hand-drawn by Jim Phillips and Hand-lettered brand logos in thick outline

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Skateboard Deck Graphics, with a counter-accent from Underground Comix. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Skateboard Deck Graphics Underground Comix

  • #f2ede0 ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #f5d312 accent · 18%
  • #e8202a accent · 14%
  • #1e7fcb accent · 10%
  • #c9307a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2ede0;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #f5d312;
  --accent-2: #e8202a;
  --accent-3: #1e7fcb;
  --accent-4: #c9307a;
  --font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Underground Comix: Much of the canon trades in racial caricature, such as a Black woman drawn as an 'African native' caricature, and in graphic sexual violence against women and casual misogyny, which the women's comics of 1970 and 1972 answered in their own books: borrow the hatched line, the crowded panel and the candour, not the stereotypes, and give every character the same anatomy and drawing care. The characters and mastheads (Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, the Freak Brothers, the Checkered Demon, the Zap logo) still belong to their makers and estates: draw your own, never ask an image model for a named cartoonist's hand, living or dead, and never present a generated page as a vintage comic.

04

The two styles

A blue, skeletal cartoon monster rides a yellow skateboard against a bright red background, with bulging eyeballs, long pointed teeth and a red tongue hanging from its enormous mouth. Large dripping yellow letters above it read “GRIND IT.” 1973–1989 · North America, Global / networked Skateboard Deck Graphics The graphics printed on the underside of skateboard decks, developed by Californian skate companies in the 1970s and 80s (the scope here; later photographic and parody decks are not covered). An artist-drawn image, usually a monster, skull, hand or cartoon figure in heavy ink outline, fills a tall vertical board in a few flat screenprinted colours, with a brand logo that repeats across a collectible series of models. A densely drawn psychedelic comic poster titled “MAGIC BUS” shows a flower-painted bus carrying grinning passengers and a dog through a desert beneath smiling celestial faces. Smaller panels follow their journey through swirling visions, giant mushrooms, a campfire gathering, and a star-filled landscape. 1968–1982 · North America, Western Europe Underground Comix Self-published, adults-only comic books from the San Francisco counterculture, made outside the Comics Code on the newsstand comic's format. Inside, pages of black pen-and-ink line on white paper, often heavily cross-hatched, crowded with big-footed caricatures and hand-lettered balloons, parody the look of 1940s children's comics while showing sex, drugs and violence; colour is kept for the cover, some of it drawn by psychedelic poster artists.

05

More combinations

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