Stylogeny combining South African Resistance Poster × Drum Magazine

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Style combination · Contrasts

South African Resistance Poster × Drum Magazine

The later South African struggle poster argues with screenprinted slogans, emblems and drawn figures; Drum argued through candid photography and urban glamour inside a commercial magazine.

From the research on Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism

Mix them and make something South African Resistance Poster Drum Magazine

OURSSouth African × Drum Magazine1978 · 1951
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from South African Resistance Poster, their arrangement from Drum Magazine, the finish from Drum Magazine. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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 Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism

Type from South African Resistance Poster
Colour from South African Resistance Poster
Form from South African Resistance Poster
Composition from Drum Magazine
Surface from Drum Magazine

02

The type

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

Display · South African Resistance Poster

Ours

Allerta Stencil, standing in for Hand-cut stencil capitals

Text · Drum Magazine

The picture magazine of Black urban Africa in the 1950s. Drum adapted the Life and Picture Post formula to Johannesburg: Jürgen Schadeberg, its photographer and layout artist, and the Black photographers he trained filled it with close, candid black-and-white pictures of jazz, boxing, shebeens, defiance and undercover exposés, behind covers of hand-tinted stars and cover girls framed by a red-box masthead and boxed cover lines. By 1959 it distributed 240,000 copies a month across Africa.

Archivo; Drum Magazine used Condensed gothic capitals and Swash italic and brush script

03

The colours

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

South African Resistance Poster Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism

  • #f4f1e8 ground · 36%
  • #141414 ink · 14%
  • #f2b51d accent · 18%
  • #d7261e accent · 14%
  • #007a4d accent · 10%
  • #4f7fb8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1e8;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #f2b51d;
  --accent-2: #d7261e;
  --accent-3: #007a4d;
  --accent-4: #4f7fb8;
  --font-display: "Allerta Stencil", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", 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.

Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism: Drum's photographs show real, named people, among them prisoners, farm labourers and protesters exposed to humiliation or danger under apartheid, and women cast as pin-ups by a magazine owned and edited by men. Many of the photographs are still under copyright in Bailey's African History Archive (BAHA), and the Drum name and masthead are owned by Media24. Borrow the system (candid black-and-white picture features, hand-tinted cover portraits, boxed punchy cover lines), never a particular photograph, the Drum name or masthead, or a real person's likeness. Do not fabricate 'documentary' scenes of real events or of apartheid-era suffering, and never present a generated image as a Drum photograph or a historical record. Photograph or license your own named subjects; in a generated image, show the subject the brief supplies, dressed and posed with dignity, never an anonymous sexualised pin-up or generic 'township' Black people as retro decor. Drum's glamour sat beside full-page skin-lightener advertisements and sponsored beauty contests: do not lighten skin tones in hand-tinting or revive that beauty ideal.

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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. A distressed vintage-style music poster features a large black-and-white image of a woman singing into a microphone, with smaller photographs of a saxophonist, a smiling couple, and dancers down the left. Oversized cream lettering on red reads “NEW BEAT,” alongside a yellow headline panel and a red footer reading “Music Lives Here.” 1951–1965 · Sub-Saharan Africa Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism The picture magazine of Black urban Africa in the 1950s. Drum adapted the Life and Picture Post formula to Johannesburg: Jürgen Schadeberg, its photographer and layout artist, and the Black photographers he trained filled it with close, candid black-and-white pictures of jazz, boxing, shebeens, defiance and undercover exposés, behind covers of hand-tinted stars and cover girls framed by a red-box masthead and boxed cover lines. By 1959 it distributed 240,000 copies a month across Africa.

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More combinations

With South African Resistance Poster

With Drum Magazine

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