Style combination · Contrasts
Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism × Square Kufic
The atlas's Soviet Central Asian entry recommends display capitals built on its mosaic or panjara module after the bannāʾī principle of tiles as pixels, for Cyrillic and Latin names only and with no Arabic script or pseudo-Kufic; use that route when a grid-built wordmark must stay secular, and square Kufic only for Arabic-script words read and approved by a fluent reader.
Mix them and make something Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism Square Kufic
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.
Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)
- Type from Square Kufic
- Colour from Square Kufic
- Form from Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism
- Composition from Square Kufic
- Surface from Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Square Kufic
Public
Reem Kufi, standing in for Bannāʾī (maʿqilī): square Kufic laid in glazed and unglazed bricks or tiles, one brick or tile per grid unit, with stroke and gap of equal width
Text · Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism
The monumental art of Soviet Central Asia after the 1966 Tashkent earthquake: a strand of Socialist Realism mixed with Islamic and national ornament. Prefabricated housing blocks and public buildings in Tashkent and Almaty, and Tashkent's metro stations, got a skin of smalt and ceramic mosaic and concrete sun-screen grilles (panjara) that enlarge Central Asian and Islamic pattern to façade scale. Near-abstract geometric and floral pattern carries much of it; figurative panels add flat, stylised musicians, epic lovers, cosmonauts and scientists in turquoise, deep blue, ochre and orange.
Jost; Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism used The sources document no lettering of the style's own, so the genome's all-caps weight (0.3) is a design recommendation, not an observed choice: for graphics, keep words few and set Cyrillic, Uzbek and Kazakh names in plain capitals so that pattern and figure carry the design and Zhurnalnaya rublenaya, or Magazine Grotesque (designed 1940–56 at the Polygraphmash type bureau under Anatoliy Shchukin, released 1947, Latin added 1962), a Soviet geometric sans after Erbar-Grotesk and Metro, for Cyrillic captions and signs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Square Kufic, with a counter-accent from Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)
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#f3eee3ground · 36% -
#161616ink · 14% -
#2a9ea6accent · 18% -
#d79a2baccent · 14% -
#1e3d8faccent · 10% -
#d2602baccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f3eee3;
--ink: #161616;
--accent-1: #2a9ea6;
--accent-2: #d79a2b;
--accent-3: #1e3d8f;
--accent-4: #d2602b;
--font-display: "Reem Kufi", cursive;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism: This is official Soviet monumental art made in Central Asia under rule from Moscow: treat its motifs as Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik heritage rather than generic 'Oriental' decoration; credit named artists, among them the Jarsky brothers, Ahmet Shaymuradov and the Kazakh artist Moldakhmet Kenbaev; keep Qur'anic and other sacred Arabic inscriptions, and pseudo-Arabic letters, out of reworked tile patterns; and draw new panels instead of copying surviving mosaics. They are attributed works whose makers or heirs may still hold rights; 157 of them have been listed heritage in Uzbekistan since 25 March 2024, while Almaty has no policy to protect its monumental art, and many mosaics there have been painted over, demolished or hidden behind hoardings and advertisements.
Square Kufic (Bannāʾī): Square-Kufic panels almost always spell sacred words: the names of God, Muhammad and ʿAli, the shahada, the takbir or Qur'anic phrases. Never crop, mirror or scramble them, never fill a surface with invented pseudo-Kufic as a pixel texture, and keep such text off floors, footwear, packaging and other throwaway surfaces. Some formulas belong to one community, such as the Shiʿi addition 'ʿAli is the friend of God', so have every composition read and approved by a fluent reader or a square-Kufic calligrapher, and commission or credit living calligraphers rather than tracing panels from buildings. The square-Kufic takbir band belongs to the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran (since July 1980), and many Iranian opposition groups and diaspora communities fly the Lion and Sun flag or a plain tricolour instead, so do not quote the band as decorative Persian shorthand. Do not treat the names Muhammad and ʿAli together as neutral filler either: they interlock on the minarets of the Shah Mosque in Isfahan, and they also appear in the blue brickwork of the Timurid shrine of the Sunni Sufi Khoja Ahmed Yasavi, so check how the community commissioning the work reads them.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · The parent doctrine in its painted poster form, with leaders, slogans and rising diagonals, is the foil: choose ornament, folklore and a flat frontal figure where it chooses the call to arms.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Set a strict ornament-free information layer of grid and grotesque against one ornamental panel to keep wayfinding legible on a patterned wall.
- Thaw Modernism (Soviet and Czechoslovak) Pairs well · Borrow its laconic flat figures, orbits and rockets for posters and booklets that sit beside a mosaic wall about science and space.
- Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition Pairs well · Take its star-and-polygon tilings at full strength for the grille or the mosaic field, then set them on a plain concrete slab beside secular figures instead of sacred script.
With Square Kufic
- Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Tradition Contrasts · The parent tradition mixes cursive Thuluth and Naskh, girih stars and arabesque, while square Kufic keeps only the orthogonal grid; choose square Kufic when a design needs one rigid two-tone module, and the wider tradition when it needs curves, interlace and polychrome hierarchy.
- Bitmap & Pixel Graphics Pairs well · Both build letters from square units, and Sakkal compares building bricks to large pixels; set a bitmap Latin wordmark on the same cell size as a square-Kufic mark for a bilingual identity, but keep sacred formulas out of jokey, game-like pixel contexts.
- Iranian Modernist Graphic Design Pairs well · Persian Wikipedia records bannāʾī in modern posters, logos and letterheads, and the atlas's Iranian modernist entry counts it among its Persian scripts; pair a square-Kufic title block with a Nastaʿlīq line and one flat figure for a Persian cultural poster.
- Andean Woven Graphic Systems Contrasts · T'oqapu also fill square cells on a grid, but with signs of rank rather than legible words; compare them to see how a grid can carry writing or emblem, and never blend the two sacred systems into a generic 'geometric' pattern.
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Pairs well · Set reading text in a low-contrast Kufi-derived Arabic sans matched to its Latin companion, and keep square Kufic for the emblem or panel, where legibility may give way to pattern.
- Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design Pairs well · Erkmen set the Latin initials TİEM on a square-Kufic grid for the Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi logo, and Ertel drew on Kufic for a Ministry of Culture logo; borrow the bannāʾī grid as a structure for a mark, but check what any Kufic letters spell before using them.
- Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering) Contrasts · Both turn sacred words into a dense band that reads first as pattern, but square Kufic snaps letters to an orthogonal grid of equal stroke and gap, while vyaz stretches free pen-drawn letters upward and plugs the gaps with plant filler; choose the grid or the calligraphic interlace, and never blend the two sacred scripts into a generic 'ancient' texture.
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphy Contrasts · Square Kufic binds Arabic letters to a square grid of straight strokes; the tughra frees them into sweeping loops and tall shafts. Use the grid for a modular, tiled emblem and the tughra for a single flourishing signature.