Stylogeny combining Victorian Letterpress × Victorian Colour Toy Books

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Style combination · Contrasts

Victorian Letterpress × Victorian Colour Toy Books

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.

From the research on Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway)

Mix them and make something Victorian Letterpress Victorian Colour Toy Books

YAY!YAY!Victorian Letterpress × Victorian Colour
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Victorian Colour Toy Books, their arrangement from Victorian Letterpress, the finish from Victorian Letterpress. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway)

Type from Victorian Letterpress
Colour from Victorian Colour Toy Books
Form from Victorian Colour Toy Books
Composition from Victorian Letterpress
Surface from Victorian Letterpress

02

The type

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

Display · Victorian Letterpress

Yay!

Abril Fatface, standing in for Fat face romans (Thorne, Figgins)

Text · Victorian Colour Toy Books

Mass-printed children's picture books in which a black key block and flat colour blocks (generally up to a dozen, as few as four), printed by Edmund Evans from wood, carried pictures that dominated short texts. The illustrators Walter Crane (flat tints and sharp outlines, influenced by Japanese colour prints), Randolph Caldecott (loose, comic movement) and Kate Greenaway (dainty colours and invented late-18th-century and Regency costume) gave the format three distinct hands under one genome; image.comic belongs to Caldecott only.

EB Garamond; Victorian Colour Toy Books used Hand-lettered titles and verses and Wood-engraved display lettering

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Victorian Colour Toy Books, with a counter-accent from Victorian Letterpress. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway)

  • #f1e6cc ground · 36%
  • #2b2622 ink · 14%
  • #e0a93b accent · 18%
  • #b3322b accent · 14%
  • #4f7ea6 accent · 10%
  • #8fae8b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e6cc;
  --ink: #2b2622;
  --accent-1: #e0a93b;
  --accent-2: #b3322b;
  --accent-3: #4f7ea6;
  --accent-4: #8fae8b;
  --font-display: "Abril Fatface", serif;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

04

The two styles

An ornate vintage-style poster reads “RIVER FAIR” in huge red and navy letters on distressed cream paper. A circular illustration of a paddle-wheel steamboat sits between the words, surrounded by floral scrollwork, patterned borders, and a rising sun. 1810–1900 · Western Europe, North America Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type 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. 1865–1900 · Western Europe Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Mass-printed children's picture books in which a black key block and flat colour blocks (generally up to a dozen, as few as four), printed by Edmund Evans from wood, carried pictures that dominated short texts. The illustrators Walter Crane (flat tints and sharp outlines, influenced by Japanese colour prints), Randolph Caldecott (loose, comic movement) and Kate Greenaway (dainty colours and invented late-18th-century and Regency costume) gave the format three distinct hands under one genome; image.comic belongs to Caldecott only.

05

More combinations

With Victorian Letterpress

All 33 combinations with Victorian Letterpress

With Victorian Colour Toy Books

Every style combination