Style combination · Pairs well

South African Resistance Poster × Atelier Populaire

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.

From the research on Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)

Mix them and make something South African Resistance Poster Atelier Populaire

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from South African Resistance Poster, their arrangement from Atelier Populaire, the finish from Atelier Populaire. 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.

South African Resistance Poster Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)

Type from South African Resistance Poster: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from South African Resistance Poster: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from South African Resistance Poster: Emblems & badges
Stylised figuration
Composition from Atelier Populaire: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from Atelier Populaire: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

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

Display · South African Resistance Poster

Rise

Allerta Stencil, standing in for Hand-cut stencil capitals

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

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from South African Resistance Poster, with a counter-accent from Atelier Populaire. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

South African Resistance Poster Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)

#f4f1e8 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#f2b51d accent · 18%
#cf2027 accent · 14%
#23408e accent · 10%
#007a4d accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1e8;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #f2b51d;
  --accent-2: #cf2027;
  --accent-3: #23408e;
  --accent-4: #007a4d;
  --font-display: "Allerta Stencil", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

South African Resistance Poster: The photograph of the dying Hector Pieterson (Sam Nzima, 16 June 1976) and the portraits of detainees and the dead show real people whose families and communities still remember them, and ANC, UDF and COSATU colours and the spear and shield are the marks of living organisations. Use them with context and permission rather than as generic protest styling.

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.

The two styles

Large black, yellow and red lettering reads “LAND FOR PEOPLE” above a stylised agricultural worker wearing a red headscarf and holding a hoe. Green crop rows, hills, small houses and a tree extend behind the figure beneath a large yellow sun.

1978–1994 · Sub-Saharan Africa South African Resistance Poster The posters of the struggle against apartheid, from the exiled Medu Art Ensemble in Gaborone to the community workshops that served the United Democratic Front and the unions in the 1980s. Low-tech silkscreen from hand-cut stencils was chosen on purpose: cheap, quick to teach, workable without electricity and often illegal. One to three flat inks carry heavy hand-lettered slogans, organisation logos, fists, crowds and photographs converted to line. 1968 · Western Europe Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) 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.