Style combination · Pairs well

AfriCOBRA × Chicano Screenprint Poster

Movement screenprints of the same years, made in and for their own communities: Chicano posters set one emblematic figure on flat colour, often parodying American packaging; AfriCOBRA packs the figure into a lettered, many-coloured field and stays sincere. Pair them, as both pair with the Panthers, for coalition work.

From the research on AfriCOBRA

Mix them and make something AfriCOBRA Chicano Screenprint Poster

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Chicano Screenprint Poster, their arrangement from AfriCOBRA, the finish from AfriCOBRA. 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.

AfriCOBRA Chicano Screenprint Poster

Type from AfriCOBRA: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Chicano Screenprint Poster: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Chicano Screenprint Poster: Stylised figuration
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from AfriCOBRA: Horror vacui
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from AfriCOBRA: Gloss & highlights
Painterly brushwork

Chicano Screenprint Poster avoids gloss & highlights: 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 · AfriCOBRA

Ours

Londrina Solid; AfriCOBRA used Hand-drawn block capitals fractured into coloured shards behind the figures and Letter-built portraits

Text · Chicano Screenprint Poster

The screenprinted poster of the Chicano Movement and its heirs, made from the mid-1960s in community workshops across California and the Southwest for farmworker strikes and boycotts, teatro, dances, anti-war marches and immigrant rights. Flat opaque inks, posterised portraits and bilingual slogans recast Mexican icons (the UFW eagle, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Posada's calaveras, Mexica glyphs) for the US barrio, often by parodying American packaging.

Archivo; Chicano Screenprint Poster used Hand-cut screen-stencil lettering and Bold sans and hand-drawn capitals for bilingual strike and boycott slogans

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Chicano Screenprint Poster, with a counter-accent from AfriCOBRA. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

AfriCOBRA Chicano Screenprint Poster

#f2eadb ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#f4a11c accent · 18%
#d7262e accent · 14%
#7a2d8c accent · 10%
#1f6f4a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2eadb;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #f4a11c;
  --accent-2: #d7262e;
  --accent-3: #7a2d8c;
  --accent-4: #1f6f4a;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

AfriCOBRA: AfriCOBRA is a self-defined Black aesthetic made by Black artists for Black communities; the collective still exists, its members and estates hold the copyrights, and the raised fist, the ankh, Yoruba orisha imagery and slogans like Nation Time carry political and spiritual meaning. Do not strip the Kool-Aid palette and letter-filled portraits into generic 'retro Black Power' branding: credit the artists, and commission Black artists for work addressed to Black audiences.

Chicano Screenprint Poster: The Virgin of Guadalupe is a devotional image for many Mexicans and Chicanos, and Chicana feminist reworkings of her have met protest. Mexica glyphs and calendar imagery carry Indigenous meaning, and the UFW black eagle is the union's own emblem, not a free motif. Use them with community context, credit the movement, and commission Chicanx printmakers rather than lifting the look for marketing.