Style combination · Pairs well
AIZ Political Photomontage × West German Conceptual Film
Heartfield tied four bloody axes into a swastika in 1934; Rambow's broken pencils laid into a swastika over a 1938 PEN list (1983) make the same move of an object turned into an emblem. Borrow the AIZ caption when the poster must accuse, and Rambow's wordless object when it should commemorate.
Mix them and make something AIZ Political Photomontage West German Conceptual Film
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.
AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)
- Type from West German Conceptual Film
- Colour from AIZ Political Photomontage
- Form from AIZ Political Photomontage
- Composition from West German Conceptual Film
- Surface from West German Conceptual Film
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · West German Conceptual Film
Okay
Inter Tight, standing in for Condensed bold grotesque for titles, set tight and often stacked (Panzerkreuzer Potemkin, 1967; Sturm über Asien; Der Malteser Falke, 1972; Rambow's Die Hamletmaschine, 1980)
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)
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from AIZ Political Photomontage, with a counter-accent from West German Conceptual Film. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)
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#ede1c3ground · 36% -
#1e1a17ink · 14% -
#c6a67caccent · 18% -
#d4441daccent · 14% -
#86603faccent · 10% -
#2f3f8faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ede1c3;
--ink: #1e1a17;
--accent-1: #c6a67c;
--accent-2: #d4441d;
--accent-3: #86603f;
--accent-4: #2f3f8f;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", 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.
West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow): Some posters turn Nazi imagery against itself: a swastika of broken pencils over the 1938 member list of the exiled German PEN (P.E.N. im Exil, 1983) and an egg given Hitler's forelock and moustache (Sein oder Nichtsein, 1964). 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 such sign unmistakably critical and check the rules where the work will be shown. Rambow's Othello poster (1978) appears to show a face in dark stage make-up, the blackface convention for the role that is now widely rejected: do not borrow it. The posters and their photographs (Hillmann, Rambow, Lienemeyer, van de Sand, Abisag Tüllmann) are in copyright: stage and photograph your own object or cut your own silhouette instead of recreating a poster.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With AIZ Political Photomontage
- NSK Retro-Avant-Garde Contrasts · NSK lifts Nazi and socialist emblems whole into solemn, centred heraldry and over-identifies with power, leaving the verdict open; AIZ builds the same kind of centred emblem, like the axe swastika, but always adds a caption that convicts. Choose by whether the viewer should be left uneasy or told what to think.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Surrealist photography also makes the impossible look photographed; take its dream logic when a brief needs strangeness, and add the AIZ headline and caption when that strangeness has to land a political point.
- Russian Constructivism Contrasts · 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.
- Situationist Détournement Graphics Pairs well · Both turn the opponent's own words and pictures against their source; take détournement's scattered press fragments and rewritten speech balloons for a looser, cheaper attack, and AIZ's seamless single picture when the charge must look like a photograph of fact.
- ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics Pairs well · 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.
- Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich) Pairs well · Simplicissimus frames a drawn caricature between a set title and a one-line caption; once it dulled its satire in the First World War, the sharpest graphic satire passed to Grosz, Kollwitz and Heartfield. Keep that title-picture-caption sentence and swap the drawing for a seamless montage to make the satire look like evidence.
- Israeli Political Poster (Tartakover to Lemel) Pairs well · Compare how a recognisable photographed object becomes an accusation, but keep the Hebrew slogan and local reference specific; resemblance in the montage method is not evidence of direct historical influence.
- Stenberg Brothers Constructivist Film Poster Pairs well · Borrow the political photomontage cut-and-assemble method, then add the Stenbergs' exaggerated scale for dynamism.
With West German Conceptual Film
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) Contrasts · Both isolate one object on a plain ground, but Basel paints a product in glossy lithographic realism to sell it; here the object stands for a film's theme, is cut to a flat silhouette or a grainy photograph, and rarely flatters.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · Its contemporary in art-film posters: the Polish school paints the metaphor and letters the title by hand in loose brushwork; take the Kassel route when the same single idea should come from a cropped photograph or a hard silhouette with set grotesque type.
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Pairs well · Hipgnosis also builds impossible scenes for the camera and lets the photograph vouch for them; add Rambow's plain ground and one line of set grotesque when such a staged photo has to work as a street poster rather than a record sleeve.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · The ICAIC film posters of revolutionary Cuba also read a film metaphorically and reduce it to one silhouette or visual pun in screenprint, but they let flat, saturated, Pop and psychedelic colour carry the energy and draw or hand-cut the title letters; the Kassel poster mostly keeps to black and one or two inks, a photograph or a hard silhouette and set grotesque type.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Shares the set grotesque, flat inks and ornament-free ground, but rejects Swiss objectivity: each poster carries one visual metaphor and a new typographic choice per film instead of a grid and a neutral system.
- French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Contrasts · Savignac's visual gag is drawn and painted to make people smile at a product; the Kassel poster finds its pun in photographs and silhouettes, and its humour is darker and aimed at a film's or play's subject.
- Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics Contrasts · Hillmann's posters also refuse star portraits and reduce a film to one sign, but they are static sheets set in grotesque type that often find the sign in a grainy photograph; Bass draws and cuts the sign by hand and builds it as a moving title before it becomes a poster.
- Israeli Political Poster (Tartakover to Lemel) Contrasts · Both can concentrate a poster into a photographed paradox and a set sans-serif title; choose the Israeli dissenting core when Hebrew slogans, national visual memory and the artist as critical witness must carry the argument, rather than a sign extracted from a film or play. Lemel's exhibition and pandemic images remain points of overlap, not a uniquely Israeli photographic technique.