Style combination · Contrasts
International Typographic Style × Victorian Letterpress
One face, flush left and white space against a centred clamour of faces: use the contrast to test whether hierarchy needs variety at all.
Mix them and make something International Typographic Style Victorian Letterpress
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.
International Typographic Style Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from International Typographic Style
- Colour from International Typographic Style
- Form from Victorian Letterpress
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International Typographic Style avoids abundant decoration: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from International Typographic Style
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Victorian Letterpress avoids modular grid and dynamic asymmetry: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Surface from Victorian Letterpress
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Victorian Letterpress
The commercial jobbing print of the industrial century: posters, playbills, auction notices and ephemera built from a flood of new display types (fat faces, Egyptians, grotesques, Tuscans and condensed wood type). Lines are centred and each is set in a different face and size to fill the measure, framed in rules and stock borders and printed in black with one or two flat colours.
Zilla Slab; Victorian Letterpress used Fat face romans and Egyptian / Antique slab serifs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from Victorian Letterpress. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
International Typographic Style Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
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#f2f0e9ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#e1251baccent · 18% -
#b3322baccent · 14% -
#1f4e9caccent · 10% -
#d9b45aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2f0e9;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #e1251b;
--accent-2: #b3322b;
--accent-3: #1f4e9c;
--accent-4: #d9b45a;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Zilla Slab", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With International Typographic Style
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Ornamental curves against an orthogonal grid make a strong deliberate tension.
- Brutalist Web Design Pairs well · Strip the grid to raw HTML defaults to get a rawer, contemporary take on Swiss honesty.
- Psychedelic Poster Contrasts · Its exact opposite on legibility; borrow one swirling element to break a too-cold Swiss layout.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Add Japanese restraint and emblematic colour fields to the grid for warmth without losing order.
- American Traditional Tattoo Flash Contrasts · Rational grid and sans-serif against sentimental, hand-lettered emblems: one flash motif on a Swiss layout makes a sharp contrast.
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Contrasts · Put a single tag or throw-up over a strict Swiss grid to stage the clash between institutional order and a street voice.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Set one loud appropriated Pop image inside a strict grid with a neutral grotesque so the irony reads as deliberate rather than chaotic.
- Italian Painted Film Poster (Rome Studios) Contrasts · Grid, restraint and photographic objectivity are the opposite of a crowded painted montage.
With Victorian Letterpress
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign writers and type founders traded letterforms; add brushed shading and drop shadows to wood-type headlines for a street-made feel.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revived Victorian display faces with irony; mix one wood-type headline with modern illustration for the same knowing nostalgia.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Morris reacted against exactly this commercial clutter; set the two side by side to show craft restraint versus jobbing exuberance.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · A Victorian mixed-face handbill is the clutter Ulm's one-family rule was meant to cure; use it as a before-and-after foil.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Contrasts · Its black-letter-dense, type-and-ornament jobbing page is the opposite of a picture-led page; combine them by hanging a wood-type title over a flat colour picture.
- Dada Pairs well · Raid Victorian wood type and stock ornaments as the Dadaists did, but scatter them instead of centring them.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.
- Urdu Katib Lithography Contrasts · Movable-type jobbing print is the technology Urdu turned down; set its centred, mixed metal faces against a flowing, hand-ruled lithographic page.