Style combination · Contrasts

International Typographic Style × Vyaz

Its opposite: airy, flush-left sans-serif on a grid against a dense, centred band of stretched calligraphic letters and plant filler; a single vyaz title can warm an otherwise strict grid.

From the research on Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

Mix them and make something International Typographic Style Vyaz

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from International Typographic Style, their arrangement from International Typographic Style, the finish from Vyaz. 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.

International Typographic Style Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

Type from Vyaz: Brush & pen calligraphy
Condensed display
Colour from International Typographic Style: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from International Typographic Style: Geometric primitives
Rectilinear
Composition from International Typographic Style: Modular grid
Dynamic asymmetry

Vyaz avoids dynamic asymmetry: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Surface from Vyaz: Flat

The type

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

Display · Vyaz

Civic

Federant, standing in for Drawn Russian Revival vyaz of about 1900, intricate and in the spirit of Art Nouveau, such as Vrubel's monolinear vyaz

Text · International Typographic Style

A post-war refinement of the New Typography in which the mathematical grid, objective photography and neo-grotesque sans-serifs were used to communicate with clarity and neutrality. Taught at the Basel and Zurich schools, it became the default language of international corporate and institutional communication.

Inter; International Typographic Style used Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from Vyaz. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

International Typographic Style Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)

#f2f0e9 ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#e1251b accent · 18%
#1f4e9c accent · 14%
#c39a3e accent · 10%
#7a7a7a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2f0e9;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #e1251b;
  --accent-2: #1f4e9c;
  --accent-3: #c39a3e;
  --accent-4: #7a7a7a;
  --font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering): Most vyaz carries sacred text: prayers, holy names, the titles of Gospels and service books, and inscriptions on icons, bells, church vessels, shrouds and graves. Do not fill a band with invented pseudo-Cyrillic or scramble real Church Slavonic as texture, keep holy names and prayers off throwaway products, and have any text written or checked by a reader of Church Slavonic. For Old Believers the pre-reform book and its lettering remain a matter of faith, so credit and involve their communities rather than lifting their headings as decoration. Vyaz is not only Russian: Bulgarian and Serbian scribes used it before Russia, Romanian scribes from the 15th century, and western and south-western Rus' in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (today's Belarus and Ukraine, with Supraśl in Poland) kept its own plant-derived manner, so credit the book culture a model comes from. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, check whether your audience will read Old Russian display lettering as Russian state or nationalist branding; vyaz is also part of Belarusian and Ukrainian book and icon heritage, so ask how that audience reads it rather than assuming either.