Anti-art design system. A collage of rejection, chance, and radical absurdity.
Zurich 1916 -- the Cabaret Voltaire erupts. Art is dead. Long live DADA.
Ink, newsprint, and the stained remnants of torn posters. Dada's palette
is the accident of the printing press -- black ink dominates, punctuated
by the muted, oxidized hues of paper scraps and rubber stamps.
Core Tones
Dada Black
#1a1a1a
Primary ink, text, borders
Ink
#2c2c2c
Secondary surfaces
Charcoal
#444444
Muted text, borders
Newsprint
#e8dcc8
Background, canvas
Paper
#f2ead8
Panels, cards
Parchment
#faf4e8
Light surfaces, text on dark
Collage Accents
Manifesto Red
#c0392b
Accents, emphasis, stamps
Rust
#a0522d
Warm accent, aged elements
Ochre
#cc8800
Warnings, highlights
Mustard
#d4a017
Secondary warm accent
Olive
#6b8e23
Success states, growth
Teal
#2e8b8b
Cool accent, links
Navy
#2c3e6b
Info states, collage blocks
Violet
#6a3d7d
Decorative accent
02
Typography
Dada typography is deliberate chaos. Fonts collide, sizes clash,
orientations shift. Every word is a cut-out pasted at an angle.
The typewriter, the broadsheet headline, the rubber stamp -- all
coexist in defiant disharmony.
The dadaist is a man who has fully understood that one is entitled to have ideas
only if one can transform them into life -- who has therefore renounced the whole
vain intellectual activity and has placed himself at the service of chance, of the
random, of the absurd gesture. The typewriter chatters on.
DESTROY the museum
and rearrange the
fragments of perception into
beautifulCHAOS
Mixed families / sizes / transforms -- the anti-hierarchy of Dada typography
Heading Scale
H1 -- Display Scale
H2 -- Section Title
H3 -- Subsection
H4 -- Component Label
H5 -- Meta Information
H6 -- Fine Print
03
Spacing
Even in chaos, rhythm exists. The spacing scale provides structure
that the collage can deliberately violate. Based on a 4px unit.
--space-xs4px
--space-sm8px
--space-md16px
--space-lg32px
--space-xl64px
--space-2xl96px
04
Buttons
Dada buttons are declarations, not invitations. Each variant
channels a different mode of anti-art provocation -- the ink stamp,
the pasted label, the ransom note fragment.
Variants
Sizes
Contextual
05
Forms
Data collection through the typewriter aesthetic. Inputs evoke
yellowed forms, rubber-stamped fields, and the mechanical clatter
of keys striking paper.
Your Dada alias
06
Cards & Panels
Content containers as collage fragments -- each panel a scrap of
meaning torn from context and reassembled. Slight rotations and
rough borders evoke the hand-assembled broadsheet.
The Readymade
Duchamp's urinal, signed "R. Mutt," entered the exhibition and
shattered every assumption about what art could be. The object
was not made -- it was chosen.
Sound Poetry
"gadji beri bimba glandridi lauli lonni cadori" -- Hugo Ball
stood on stage in a cardboard costume, chanting nonsense syllables
that stripped language to its primal vibration.
Photomontage
Hannah Hoch sliced through magazines, recombining heads, bodies,
and machinery into visions of a fragmented modernity that no
single photograph could capture.
Merzbau
Schwitters built cathedrals from garbage -- bus tickets, wire,
newspaper, broken wood. Merz was everything Dada was and more:
total art from total refuse.
The Manifesto
"DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING." Tzara's manifestos were
performances in themselves -- contradictory, explosive,
designed to destroy the very notion of a manifesto.
Chance Operations
Jean Arp tore paper into fragments and let them fall where
they may. The composition was not designed -- it was surrendered
to the laws of randomness.
07
Alerts
Notifications as communiques, bulletins, and declarations.
Each alert carries the urgency of the Dada broadsheet --
information delivered with the weight of a rubber stamp.
The next Cabaret Voltaire performance has been scheduled for the 14th.
Attendance is compulsory. Bring scissors.
Your submission to the Salon des Independants has been received.
No jury. No prizes. No returns.
The bourgeoisie have been alerted to our activities.
Proceed with maximum absurdity.
We declare that the automobile, which has accelerated our static age,
cannot cure the stupidity of mankind. DADA alone does not smell.
DADA is against the future. DADA is dead. DADA is absurd.
Long live DADA. We are not responsible for anything.
08
Photomontage Grid
An asymmetric layout system inspired by Hoch's photomontage technique.
Fragments of varying scale overlap and collide, rejecting the uniform
grid in favor of deliberate visual tension.
Fragment A
Fragment B
Fragment C
Fragment D
Fragment E
Fragment F
Fragment G
Fragment H
09
Manifesto Panel
The dark proclamation block -- for when content must be delivered
as a declaration against reason itself.
A Declaration
Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family
is Dada; protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in
destructive action: Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up
until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners:
Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create.
10
Navigation
Navigation as a collage of labeled tabs -- slightly askew, as though
pasted onto the page by hand. Each link a torn fragment of direction.
11
Blockquotes
Voices from the movement -- rendered as torn broadsheet fragments
with the weight of the display typeface.
Dada is the sun, Dada is the egg. Dada is the Police of the Police.
Richard Huelsenbeck, En Avant Dada, 1920
The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.
Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto, 1918
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
Marcel Duchamp