Style combination · Contrasts
Supergraphics × Ma
Quiet, unfinished interiors against loud, total colour make a deliberate counterweight in a mixed scheme.
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.
Supergraphics Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics
- Type from Supergraphics
- Colour from Ma
- Form from Supergraphics
- Composition from Supergraphics
- Surface from Ma
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Ma
A Japanese aesthetic rooted in Zen and the wabi tea ceremony that prizes austerity, imperfection, impermanence and the charged interval (ma) between things. In graphic design it appears as vast empty grounds, a single off-centre element, muted natural colours, visible material texture and the unrepeatable brush mark, from ink painting to Muji's 'emptiness'.
Shippori Mincho; Ma used Bokuseki and Sōsho cursive kana and kanji
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Ma, with a counter-accent from Supergraphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Supergraphics Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics
-
#e9e4d8ground · 36% -
#2b2a28ink · 14% -
#7d4e3aaccent · 18% -
#f6b800accent · 14% -
#b9a88aaccent · 10% -
#e63b2eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #e9e4d8;
--ink: #2b2a28;
--accent-1: #7d4e3a;
--accent-2: #f6b800;
--accent-3: #b9a88a;
--accent-4: #e63b2e;
--font-display: "Jost", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Supergraphics
- Memphis Design Pairs well · Its clashing colour and pattern can energise a painted wall, though it adds ornament that supergraphics usually leaves out. Memphis dates from 1981, so it is a later pairing, not an influence.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · Use its disciplined identity colours and sans type to make an architectural graphic read as a brand.
With Ma
- Minimalist Graphic Design Pairs well · Add one rough material or brush mark to a minimalist layout so its emptiness feels lived-in rather than sterile.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Use a modernist grid but leave whole modules empty, the way Tanaka and Hara let ma structure the page.
- Memphis Design Contrasts · Memphis is loud, synthetic and glossy; set one Memphis squiggle on a vast wabi ground only if you want deliberate friction.
- Scandinavian Functionalism Pairs well · Both prize natural materials and restraint; combine Nordic clarity with wabi irregularity for warm, quiet identities.
- Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition Pairs well · Both make the empty interval carry meaning and place a few elements off-centre in earth colours; uli supplies a living line and named signs where wabi-sabi supplies texture and a single mark.
- Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look) Pairs well · Leonard Koren, author of the 1994 book on wabi-sabi for designers, joined Kinfolk's editorial board in 2016; add a cracked bowl, raw linen or an off-centre object on a bare ground to make the calm less styled and more lived-in.
- Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi) Pairs well · Give one brushed word a wide, quiet field of paper-toned space so its dry streaks and pooled ink read as the whole design.
- Rinpa & Saga-bon Contrasts · Both come from Kyoto's tea culture (Kōetsu also made Raku tea bowls), but wabi-sabi wants rough clay and empty paper where Rinpa wants gold leaf and malachite; one bare field can serve either, so choose the material that fills it.