Style combination · Contrasts
Art Deco × Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
The same decade with opposite manners: Deco's gold and luxury against Klaxon's tinted card, single ink and jokes about the sonnet trade.
Mix them and make something Art Deco Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
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.
Art Deco Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)
- Type from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
- Colour from Art Deco
- Form from Art Deco
- Composition from Art Deco
- Surface from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
Orbit
Anton, standing in for Heavy jobbing grotesque capitals (KLAXON across every Klaxon cover, 1922-23; condensed grotesques for the mock 'Aviso á Praça' and price list)
Text · Art Deco
The glamorous modern style named after the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which disciplined ornament into geometry: sunbursts, chevrons, stepped forms and sleek stylised figures rendered in lacquer-smooth colour with metallic accents. In Cassandre's and Colin's posters, fashion magazines, cinemas and luxury packaging it spoke of speed, travel, jazz and wealth.
Jost; Art Deco used Broadway and Bifur
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Art Deco, with a counter-accent from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Art Deco Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)
-
#111111ground · 36% -
#f1e6cfink · 14% -
#c9a227accent · 18% -
#8c1c26accent · 14% -
#c8402aaccent · 10% -
#0f5c55accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #111111;
--ink: #f1e6cf;
--accent-1: #c9a227;
--accent-2: #8c1c26;
--accent-3: #c8402a;
--accent-4: #0f5c55;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22): Antropofagia's cannibal metaphor and its Tupi words ('Tupy, or not tupy') were a São Paulo elite's figure of speech about Indigenous peoples, not their own voice: borrow the method of swallowing and recombining foreign models, not Tupi people or ritual as decoration. Much of this work is still in copyright in Brazil (life plus 70 years): Guilherme de Almeida (died 1969), Anita Malfatti (1964), Tarsila do Amaral (1973), Di Cavalcanti (1976), John Graz (1980), Paim (1988) and Yan de Almeida Prado (1991); Brecheret (1955) entered the Brazilian public domain on 1 January 2026. A straight green-and-yellow flag pastiche now reads in Brazil as a partisan emblem, so quote Pau Brasil's gesture of rewriting the flag rather than the flag itself.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Art Deco
- Googie & Atomic Age Pairs well · Googie's atomic starbursts extend Deco's celestial ornament; mix them for retro hospitality and signage.
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Puncture Deco polish with a single torn, photocopied edge when luxury needs irony.
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Deco straightened Nouveau's whiplash; place a rigid sunburst beside one sinuous curve to show the evolution.
- Streamline Moderne Pairs well · Fold Streamline speed lines and rounded corners into a Deco layout to move from stepped geometry toward aerodynamic sweep.
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) Contrasts · A source as well as a foil: Leupin studied at the École Paul Colin in Paris in 1935-36 and took strong impressions from Colin and from Colin's rival Cassandre. Both make a product a heroic icon, but Deco stylises it into a geometric silhouette with airbrushed gradation and geometric capitals, while Basel paints the real object, its material and its label, as a still life.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Pairs well · Both drew the 1920s skyline; pair Deco's setback towers and block display letters with Stridentist black-and-white relief for a skyscraper poster with a rougher, revolutionary edge.
- Vienna Secession Pairs well · Carry the Secession's squares, chequers and gold into Deco's stepped geometry for a luxurious but disciplined look.
- Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT) Contrasts · Katzourakis studied poster design under Paul Colin in Paris; set a Deco travel poster's heroic, airbrushed destination beside this flat, cut-out sign to show how the tourist poster was stripped down after the war.
With Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
- Tropicália Graphic Design Pairs well · Tropicália revived Oswald de Andrade's Antropofagia as 'antropofagia visual' in the late 1960s; combine Klaxon's spare two-ink letterpress with Tropicália's saturated collage when a Brazilian theme needs both wit and heat.
- Brazilian Concrete Design Pairs well · Almeida's tumbled LACTA advertisement gained new meaning once concrete poetry arrived in the 1950s. Set a Klaxon-style word image on a concrete grid to keep the play of letters but discipline its spacing.
- Vorticism & BLAST Typography Contrasts · Both set heavy jobbing grotesque with thick rules and bars in a little magazine, BLAST in 1914 and Klaxon in 1922; BLAST shouts lists beside machine abstractions, Klaxon keeps one quiet cover forme, jokes about the sonnet trade and draws figures in contour.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Neutral grid and one sans against a jobbing case of mixed faces, broken words and mock adverts: set a Klaxon cover beside a Swiss poster to show order against irony.
- Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil) Pairs well · Two playful letterpress avant-gardes of the 1920s that turned posters, programmes and adverts into poems; Devětsil's photomontage and bars can stand in where Klaxon would use a contour drawing.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Pairs well · Two Latin American avant-gardes launched within two months of each other (Actual No. 1 in December 1921, the Semana in February 1922). Pair Klaxon's shared-letter letterpress cover with a Stridentist woodcut skyline for a 1920s magazine that is both witty and machine-mad.