Style combination · Contrasts
ACT UP × Atelier Populaire
Both answered a crisis with overnight slogans on the street, but the May '68 posters were brushed by hand and pulled in one ink, while most ACT UP and Gran Fury posters were professionally printed in offset and modelled on advertising; choose rough urgency or seductive polish before mixing them.
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.
ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)
- Type from ACT UP
- Colour from Atelier Populaire
- Form from Atelier Populaire
- Composition from Atelier Populaire
- Surface from ACT UP
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · ACT UP
Riot
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 · Atelier Populaire
The posters of the Atelier populaire, set up when students, teachers and artists occupied the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris on 14 May 1968, until police cleared the school on 27 June. Designs were voted on at evening assemblies, left unsigned and pulled on improvised silkscreens: one flat ink on cheap or donated paper, a single brushed silhouette (a riot policeman, de Gaulle, a factory) and a short punning slogan in rough capitals, pasted up across Paris overnight.
Oswald; Atelier Populaire used Brushed letters, left open on the silk while gum arabic is painted around them to block the screen, so the edges stay ragged and uneven and Wall-slogan handwriting of May '68, lifted from graffiti and marches
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Atelier Populaire, 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 Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)
-
#f2eee3ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#cf2027accent · 18% -
#23408eaccent · 14% -
#f06ea9accent · 10% -
#b4875aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2eee3;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #cf2027;
--accent-2: #23408e;
--accent-3: #f06ea9;
--accent-4: #b4875a;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Oswald", 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.
Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster): The posters were made anonymously and given away, and some equate the police or de Gaulle with the Nazis (the SS on a riot policeman's shield, popularly 'CRS SS'; Hitler holding a de Gaulle mask); do not attribute them to individual designers, sell pastiches as May '68 originals, or aim those Nazi comparisons at real people today without that history in view. 'Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands' answered antisemitic attacks on Cohn-Bendit's origins (the far-right press smeared him as a Marxist German Jew, and Georges Marchais wrote in L'Humanité of 'the German anarchist'); do not reuse it, or the 'indésirables' poster, as a generic 'we are all X' template without that history.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With ACT UP
- Extinction Rebellion Graphics Pairs well · A later movement that again reduces its cause to one emblem and a fixed set of slogans in heavy capitals; pair XR's flat colour grounds with ACT UP's facts in small print when a protest poster must both rally and inform.
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Gran Fury photocopied some posters and handbills like a punk zine, but kept the layout clean and legible: one image, one slogan and plain sans type in place of ransom-note collage, even when the photograph broke into coarse xerox dots (Read My Lips); add punk's torn xerox only when the message should look home-made rather than official.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · RIOT (1988), a painting later issued as a sticker, reworks Robert Indiana's LOVE letters and Kissing Doesn't Kill copies a Benetton campaign: borrow Pop's habit of lifting mass-media images and lettering, but replace Pop's ironic detachment with a named target and a demand.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Stands here for the logo logic of SILENCE=DEATH, one emblem and clean sans capitals repeated like a corporate mark; the advertising Gran Fury and ACT UP otherwise copied was 1980s brand campaigns and mastheads (Benetton, Nike, Coca-Cola, The New York Times) rather than mid-century corporate identity. Set an AIDS-era slogan in a corporate format when the point is to turn a brand's own voice against it.
- Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave) Contrasts · Two movements signed with a triangle, ACT UP's pink one on black and the green kerchief, but Gran Fury bought ad space and printed offset photographs and Futura, while the green wave wears its sign and letters its placards by hand; polish against handmade multitude.
- Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics) Contrasts · Its confrontational opposite: black grounds, hot pink and one blunt slogan, where the typical slideshow shuns 'blood red or black messaging' (Ría Thompson-Washington) and softens the message to stay comfortable.
- Plain Tobacco Packaging Pairs well · Gran Fury's white capitals on black are the activist cousin of the mandated warning statement; borrow their wit when a health message must persuade without leaning on clinical shock photographs.
- Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals) Pairs well · Both speak in white bold capitals on black; take Gran Fury's wit when a nutrition campaign must persuade around the shelf rather than only on the pack.
With Atelier Populaire
- South African Resistance Poster Pairs well · Both chose hand-made silkscreen because it was cheap, quick and teachable to non-artists; borrow the struggle posters' organisation emblems and second ink when a campaign must stay recognisable beyond one day's slogan.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · Same decade, opposite means: ICAIC's silkscreened film posters and OSPAAAL's mostly offset solidarity posters were polished, many-coloured and made to last, while the Atelier's one anonymous ink was pulled overnight for the next morning's wall; decide which of the two the brief needs.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · Polish posters are signed painterly metaphors by named authors, while the Atelier stripped away signature and painterly finish; a recognisable individual hand breaks its collective voice.
- ROSTA Windows Pairs well · Like the ROSTA windows, each sheet answers the day's news by hand with a stark figure and a caption; run single posters as a numbered sequence when one image cannot tell the whole story.
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · The House of European History traces a line from these posters to Jamie Reid's Sex Pistols graphics; set one brushed slogan in a single ink against xerox cut-up for a flyer with the same anti-authority bite.
- See Red Women's Workshop Feminist Screenprints Contrasts · Both are collective, unsigned screenprints, but May '68 shouts one emblem and a strike slogan, while See Red tells a small domestic story with a wry caption.
- Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective) Contrasts · The founders came out of the 1968 workshops, but the Beaux-Arts atelier pulled one flat ink, one brushed silhouette and a slogan in rough capitals; Grapus layers photographs, paint and coloured handwriting, mostly on white. Use the first for overnight urgency, Grapus for a warmer, longer campaign.
- Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo) Pairs well · The type designer Alessio D'Ellena, quoted by Vice, places ultras' vernacular letters 'more in the tradition of' the Atelier Populaire's anonymous May '68 posters; borrow their single brushed slogan and anonymous signature for a banner with something to say.