Style combination · Contrasts

AIZ Political Photomontage × Russian Constructivism

Constructivist photomontage drives heroic figures along diagonals with bars, red ink and exploding type; AIZ uses the same cut photographs in a centred, single-ink picture with a quiet caption, mostly to mock and sometimes, as in the 1937 radio-wave fist, to rally. The debt is direct: Heartfield spent April 1931 to January 1932 in the Soviet Union, looked after by Sergei Tretyakov and, it seems, getting on well with Gustav Klutsis, and the Art Institute of Chicago traces the 1934 many-arms fist cover to Klutsis's 1932 election poster of one raised hand repeated into a crowd.

From the research on AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)

Mix them and make something AIZ Political Photomontage Russian Constructivism

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

AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Russian Constructivism

Type from Russian Constructivism: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
All caps
Colour from AIZ Political Photomontage: Monochrome
Gradients
Form from AIZ Political Photomontage: Naturalistic depiction
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Russian Constructivism: Diagonal axis
Extreme scale contrast
Surface from AIZ Political Photomontage

The type

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

Display · Russian Constructivism

Wake

Archivo Black, standing in for Soviet heavy grotesques (rubleny shrift)

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 Russian Constructivism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Russian Constructivism

#ede1c3 ground · 36%
#1e1a17 ink · 14%
#c6a67c accent · 18%
#d1261c accent · 14%
#86603f accent · 10%
#4b2b1c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ede1c3;
  --ink: #1e1a17;
  --accent-1: #c6a67c;
  --accent-2: #d1261c;
  --accent-3: #86603f;
  --accent-4: #4b2b1c;
  --font-display: "Archivo Black", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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

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. 1917–1934 · Eastern Europe Russian Constructivism Constructivism rejected art for art's sake in favour of the artist-engineer building useful things for the new Soviet society. In posters, books, film publicity and state advertising it fused bold grotesque type, heavy bars, photomontage and diagonal axes into an urgent, utilitarian language of agitation that shaped modern graphic design worldwide.