Entertainment giant House of Blues has a uniquely lo-fi take on design. These examples feature a rubberstamp- like approach to type and images.


This poster from Hammerpress illustrate lo-fi as both production technique and graphic style. Printed on inexpensive posterboard, it's composed of graphic elements (particularly patterns and borders) that are reused dies from other projects. It exhibits a kind of “orderly chaos,” with rough typography and illustration working together to create a sophisticated naiveté.

It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. Naturally, that applies to graphic design. Sometimes budget constraints wear down designers and cause a sense of futility, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Down and dirty doesn’t have to mean ugly and ineffective. Limitations can instead push a designer to new levels of inventiveness. As famed designer Charles Eames once said, “Design depends largely on constraints.”

What is lo-fi?
Forced with restrictions, some designers turn to new ideas and new production methods, which then prompt new graphic approaches for exploration. Sometimes old is new again, and time-tested hand-done techniques come back into play. Other times, it’s simply a question of aesthetics—a desire for a “high-touch” tactile quality, with looks evolved from production constraints of the past. This may not be a reaction to limited dollars, but a backlash against slick-looking work. Whatever the motivation, sometimes the best solution is to go lo-fi.

The term lo-fi comes from the audio world, where it is short for low fidelity. Lo-fi was once a fact of life on all sound recordings due to technological limitations. Today, lo-fi audio—complete with its characteristic noise and static—is a creative choice to support a particular musical style or emotional intent in a musician’s work. The term applies to graphic design equally as well: using technology (or not using it) to achieve a gritty look and a specific kind of emotional impact.

Lo-fi is equally expressed in both concept and execution. Different designers define the term in different ways. Some think of it as a set of production techniques, while others think of it as a graphic style. Still others just “know it when they see it” as a mélange of both style and technique. Regardless, going lo-fi is an especially effective strategy when used as a deliberate approach to the reality of working within budget constraints.

It’s a production technique
“Lo-fi graphics is economical, cheaply made design. I’d also include design using very little technology, not using weird techie filters and stuff that comes with all the programs nowadays. I think of ’zines, newsprint, silkscreen, woodcut, and letterpress,” says designer and educator Jon N. Sueda.

For lo-fi production, consider printing on inexpensive paper stocks, limiting ink colors, and using prefabricated materials … to name just a few techniques. The House of Blues uses stock uncoated kraft Chinese takeout boxes printed with one-color red ink as containers to serve fries in their restaurants.

Pushing boundaries with limited resources often means pushing the limits of production technology or thinking of new ways to incorporate and use old techniques, as when AdamsMorioka used a newspaper printer to print “mark your calendars” promotions for the Sundance Film Festival.

Lo-fi can mean repurposing elements for high impact at low expense. Lo-fi designers use limited colors—for example, duotones—to give the illusion of more colors. These designs create impact from the intensity of color, as in the Hammerpress poster. Knowing up front that you’ll be limited in certain ways is critical.

Using the aesthetic but employing hi-tech tools to create it is the reality of many lo-fi designs. It is ironic to use high-powered computers to achieve a look labored over by hand in days gone by, and lo-fi designs often subtly comment on that irony to achieve impact. Photographing and scanning vernacular objects with funky wood, painted, or metal type allow designers to create new digital type specimens that can be used in headlines for a distinct look.

“I think lo-fi is both the technique and the style. In production, they’re intertwined. If something is done in a lo-fi technique it has to look it, like rubber stamping or Xeroxing,” says Michele Moore of Moore Graphic Design. “You can’t fake your way up to hi-fi. However, lo-fi as a style can be achieved many ways. For example, on the web I’d say lo-fi means simple HTML colors and texts.”