Style combination · Pairs well

AIZ Political Photomontage × Surrealist Graphics

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.

From the research on AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)

Mix them and make something AIZ Political Photomontage Surrealist Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Surrealist Graphics, their arrangement from Surrealist Graphics, the finish from Surrealist Graphics. 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) Surrealist Graphics

Type from AIZ Political Photomontage: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Geometric sans
Colour from AIZ Political Photomontage: Monochrome
Gradients
Form from Surrealist Graphics: Naturalistic depiction
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Surrealist Graphics: Collage & layering
Illusion of depth

AIZ Political Photomontage avoids collage & layering: this is where the two pull against each other.
Surface from Surrealist Graphics

The type

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

Display · AIZ Political Photomontage

Okay

Jost, standing in for Bold geometric or grotesque sans capitals of the Erbar, Kabel or Futura kind, with round C and G, for the headline, stacked above the picture ('DER SINN DES HITLERGRUSSES:', AIZ cover, 16 October 1932; 'BLUT UND EISEN', 1934) or widely letterspaced across the foot of a spread ('KRIEG UND LEICHEN – DIE LETZTE HOFFNUNG DER REICHEN', 1932)

Text · Surrealist Graphics

Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious. Its graphic legacy (uncanny collage from old engravings, solarised and cameraless photographs, impossible juxtapositions painted with illusionistic precision) passed through magazines like Minotaure into fashion, advertising and book design on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bodoni Moda; Surrealist Graphics used Artists' hand-lettered mastheads and Didone and Victorian display faces lifted from 19th-century catalogues

The colours

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

AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Surrealist Graphics

#ede1c3 ground · 36%
#1e1a17 ink · 14%
#c6a67c accent · 18%
#a24a2a accent · 14%
#4b2b1c accent · 10%
#6f8fb5 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ede1c3;
  --ink: #1e1a17;
  --accent-1: #c6a67c;
  --accent-2: #a24a2a;
  --accent-3: #4b2b1c;
  --accent-4: #6f8fb5;
  --font-display: "Jost", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Bodoni Moda", 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.

A distressed, surreal collage combines a large woman's face with a curling seashell, stone staircases, ruined arches, and cliffside buildings above a blue sea. An orange fish floats in the foreground, a tiny person stands on the stairs, and a golden disc hangs among clouds beside the title “The Drift.”

1924–1960 · Western Europe, North America Surrealist Graphics Launched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious. Its graphic legacy (uncanny collage from old engravings, solarised and cameraless photographs, impossible juxtapositions painted with illusionistic precision) passed through magazines like Minotaure into fashion, advertising and book design on both sides of the Atlantic.