Style combination · Contrasts

Superflat × Yuru-chara

Superflat turns Japanese character culture into gallery irony, crowded and cute-grotesque; yuru-chara keeps characters sincere, civic and plain, one figure at a time.

From the research on Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)

Mix them and make something Superflat Yuru-chara

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Yuru-chara, their arrangement from Yuru-chara, the finish from Superflat. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Superflat Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)

Type from Yuru-chara: Hand-lettering
Rounded sans
Colour from Superflat: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Yuru-chara: Stylised figuration
Rounded & pill
Composition from Yuru-chara: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from Superflat: Gloss & highlights
Flat

The type

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

Display · Yuru-chara

Pop

Zen Maru Gothic, standing in for Maru gothic (rounded gothic) Japanese type, such as Morisawa's Shin Maru Go, for captions, event banners and goods

Text · Yuru-chara

Japan's local mascots: characters commissioned by prefectures, towns and tourism bodies to stand for a place, named yuru-kyara ('loose characters') by the illustrator Jun Miura around 2000. Each body is built from a local product, landmark or legend, such as Hikonyan's samurai helmet or Barysan's towel belly band, drawn as one frontal figure with a big head and a few flat colours, and lived out as a walk-about costume. Hikonyan (2007) set off the boom; Kumamon (2010), licensed free for goods that promote Kumamoto, made it an industry.

Zen Maru Gothic; Yuru-chara used Hand-drawn kana name lettering in thick, rounded strokes set beside the figure, spelling the mascot's name in hiragana or katakana, as in くまモン, ひこにゃん or バリィさん and Maru gothic (rounded gothic) Japanese type, such as Morisawa's Shin Maru Go, for captions, event banners and goods

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Superflat, with a counter-accent from Yuru-chara. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Superflat Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)

#fbfaf5 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#ffd900 accent · 18%
#ffd23f accent · 14%
#00a0e9 accent · 10%
#e3242b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbfaf5;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #ffd900;
  --accent-2: #ffd23f;
  --accent-3: #00a0e9;
  --accent-4: #e3242b;
  --font-display: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Superflat: Some canonical works use explicit otaku sexual imagery, such as Murakami's My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), and associated artists engage with lolicon art: Mr. describes himself as a lolicon and Henmaru Machino parodies it; never sexualise childlike figures. The mushroom-cloud skulls of Murakami's Time Bokan works and the title Little Boy, the name of the Hiroshima bomb, refer to the atomic bombings, and critics such as Dong-Yeon Koh argue that this victim narrative obscures Japanese aggression in China and Korea; do not use mushroom clouds or skulls as cute decoration. Handle borrowed Buddhist iconography and phrases, such as Kannon, with respect, and draw original characters and flowers: Mr. DOB, the smiling flowers and the Louis Vuitton monogram are owned designs.

Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design): Mascots are owned designs: Kumamon's copyright is held by Kumamoto Prefecture, which allows free use in Japan only with its permission and a displayed permit number, and Hikone and Hikonyan's illustrator fought over the character's rights from 2007 through mediation, a 2011 court ruling and a 2012 settlement, so invent an original character for each place and agree rights with the illustrator first. Keep sacred figures out of the joke: Buddhist groups in Nara objected that Sento-kun, a Buddha-like child with deer antlers, insulted the Buddha. And do not use a cute mascot to soften a contested public risk, as with the tritium mascot that Japan's Reconstruction Agency made to promote releasing treated water from Fukushima, pulled a day after its release in April 2021.