Style combination · Pairs well

ACT UP × AIZ Political Photomontage

Both put a photograph under a one-line charge against named people; set Gran Fury's facts and demands in small print beneath a Heartfield-style literal metaphor when the accusation needs evidence.

From the research on AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)

Mix them and make something ACT UP AIZ Political Photomontage

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from AIZ Political Photomontage, their arrangement from ACT UP, the finish from ACT UP. 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.

ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)

Type from ACT UP: All caps
Type as image
Colour from AIZ Political Photomontage: Monochrome
Gradients
Form from AIZ Political Photomontage: Naturalistic depiction
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from ACT UP: Layered information
Isolated object
Surface from ACT UP: Photocopy & distress
Flat

AIZ Political Photomontage avoids photocopy & distress: this is where the two pull against each other.

The type

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

Display · ACT UP

Now!

Anton; ACT UP used Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed in white capitals reversed out of black for SILENCE=DEATH (1987), settled on after months in which the collective 'argued about issues, images and fonts' and Futura Extra Bold, Extra Bold Oblique and Extra Bold Condensed in black or white

Text · AIZ Political Photomontage

The political photomontage John Heartfield made for the communist weekly AIZ from 1930 to 1938, in Berlin and, from 1933, in Prague exile. Press photographs were cut, joined, retouched with airbrush and rephotographed into one seamless, believable picture that usually takes an opponent's slogan or symbol, most often a Nazi one, literally and, less often, raises a heroic emblem such as the clenched fist. It was printed full-page in single-ink photogravure between a short headline and a deadpan caption or quotation in plain bold sans.

Jost; AIZ Political Photomontage used Bold geometric or grotesque sans capitals of the Erbar and Bold geometric or grotesque sans upper- and lowercase, often with a double-storey a, for the punchline, often reversed white out of the dark gravure ('Kleiner Mann bittet um große Gaben', 1932; 'Hurrah, die Butter ist alle!', 1935; 'Die Stimme der Freiheit in deutscher Nacht – auf Welle 29,8', 1937)

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from AIZ Political Photomontage, with a counter-accent from ACT UP. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)

#ede1c3 ground · 36%
#1e1a17 ink · 14%
#c6a67c accent · 18%
#c8102e accent · 14%
#86603f accent · 10%
#f06ea9 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ede1c3;
  --ink: #1e1a17;
  --accent-1: #c6a67c;
  --accent-2: #c8102e;
  --accent-3: #86603f;
  --accent-4: #f06ea9;
  --font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics: These are the graphics of a movement of gay men, lesbians and people with AIDS who were burying their friends, and many of their makers and subjects are living or died of AIDS (Mark Simpson, who appears in Kissing Doesn't Kill, died in 1996; Oliver Johnston in 1990); HIV remains a global health issue and ACT UP is still active. The pink triangle recalls the homosexual prisoners of the Nazi camps and was turned to point up as 'a disavowal of victimhood' (in Finkelstein's account; the Henry Ford's history says the inversion began as a mistake that the collective kept): do not use it, the SILENCE=DEATH equation or the kissing couples as decoration, Pride merchandise or brand campaigns, since the style was made to turn advertising against corporate greed, and do not picture people with HIV as victims or as a threat. SILENCE=DEATH is © 1987 The Silence = Death Project, which lent it to ACT UP (the poster reads 'Used by permission by ACT-UP'); Gran Fury's website declares its own artwork public domain, but the photographed people and quoted brands are not: write your own slogan and stage your own photograph, and never present a generated image as a period work.

AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield): The montages turn swastikas and portraits of Nazi leaders against the regime; displaying Nazi symbols is restricted by law in Germany and several other countries outside contexts such as art, satire, education and history, so keep any reuse unmistakably critical and check the rules where the work will be shown. AIZ was also a communist magazine informally financed by the Comintern: before 1933 its montages attacked the Social Democrats as well as the Nazis, and in 1934 it devoted a special issue to seventeen years of the Soviet Union, so treat the style as partisan propaganda, and do not turn its literal, accusatory montage on named living people without checking defamation and image-rights law.

The two styles

A black-and-white close-up shows a hand holding a bottle labeled HIV medication with a price of $2,800 per month. Below it, an oversized black headline on a bright pink band reads “PROFITS KILL,” followed by statistics and demands for lower drug prices.

1987–1995 · North America ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics The graphics of New York's AIDS activist movement: the SILENCE=DEATH poster of 1987, a pink triangle above white capitals on black, and the posters, stickers, T-shirts, billboards and bus ads of Gran Fury (1988–1995), ACT UP's 'unofficial propaganda ministry'. Professional offset print and the language of Madison Avenue (staged photographs, one-line slogans, facts in small print) were placed where advertising goes, to accuse government, church, press and drug companies of letting people with AIDS die. 1930–1938 · Central Europe AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) The political photomontage John Heartfield made for the communist weekly AIZ from 1930 to 1938, in Berlin and, from 1933, in Prague exile. Press photographs were cut, joined, retouched with airbrush and rephotographed into one seamless, believable picture that usually takes an opponent's slogan or symbol, most often a Nazi one, literally and, less often, raises a heroic emblem such as the clenched fist. It was printed full-page in single-ink photogravure between a short headline and a deadpan caption or quotation in plain bold sans.