Style combination · Contrasts
Art Deco × Greek Tourism Modernism
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.
Mix them and make something Art Deco Greek Tourism Modernism
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 Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)
- Type from Art Deco
- Colour from Greek Tourism Modernism
- Form from Art Deco
- Composition from Greek Tourism Modernism
- Surface from Art Deco
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Greek Tourism Modernism
The modernist image of Greece made for the National Tourism Organisation (EOT) by Michalis Katzourakis, its art adviser in 1960-1967, and by Frederick Carabott, who advised it until 1967; in 1962 the two also founded the K&K Athens Advertising Centre. A poster sets one Hellenic sign (a photographed relief, vase or statue, a Byzantine dome) on flat saturated colour or, full-bleed, a mosaic or a woven ship, under the country's name, often one lowercase word in bold sans: grèce, greece. After 1967 photography gradually took over, but other designers kept the manner going at EOT under the junta.
Inter; Greek Tourism Modernism used Bold sans-serif in lowercase, geometric or grotesque, for the one-word country name (grèce, greece, griechenland), most often on the EOT posters of 1960-1963, and still on 'athens festival' in 1974 and Widely spaced roman serif capitals
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Greek Tourism Modernism, with a counter-accent from Art Deco. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Art Deco Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)
-
#141414ground · 36% -
#f3efe6ink · 14% -
#f2c230accent · 18% -
#c9a227accent · 14% -
#8c1c26accent · 10% -
#d9402baccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #141414;
--ink: #f3efe6;
--accent-1: #f2c230;
--accent-2: #c9a227;
--accent-3: #8c1c26;
--accent-4: #d9402b;
--font-display: "Poiret One", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT): Many of these posters picture Byzantine churches and monasteries, such as Mystras and island chapels, that remain active Orthodox sacred places, and borrow woven and mosaic motifs from living regional crafts: use them with that weight, not as interchangeable 'Greek' decoration. The style is also a state nation-branding image made for foreign visitors, and other designers went on making EOT posters in this manner, beside colour photography, under the 1967-1974 military dictatorship, so do not present its sunlit antiquity as a neutral picture of Greece. Commercial reuse of photographs of Greek monuments and museum antiquities also needs permission from, and a fee to, the Greek state (Law 4858/2021, article 46), so clear any statue, relief or site photograph before using it in new work.
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.
- Cubist Pictorial Space Pairs well · Fracture a Deco poster subject into crisp Cubist planes, as Cassandre did, to add depth and movement without losing polish.
With Greek Tourism Modernism
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Its parent by look rather than by training (neither designer studied in Switzerland): it keeps the Swiss lowercase grotesque, flat spot colour and treated photograph, but drops the grid for one symbolic picture, often on a symmetrical axis; add a Swiss column grid when the text must say more than a country's name.
- Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN) Contrasts · Both are southern European state images aimed partly at foreign visitors, but the SPN staged a static rural, Catholic idyll in lithographed figures, while EOT turned antiquity and the islands into cut-out signs on colour; compare them to choose between folk narrative and modernist emblem.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Both set one national emblem on a flat field of colour; borrow Kamekura's geometric sun disc and charged emptiness to tighten a Greek heritage motif into a modern mark.
- Iranian Modernist Graphic Design Contrasts · Both are 1960s national modernisms that turned heritage into modern posters: Tehran built it from calligraphic letterforms, EOT from photographed antiquities under a single word of sans; compare them to choose between letter-led and object-led heritage modernism.
- Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era) Contrasts · Both are national tourism posters selling sun to foreign visitors under the country's name, but ANTA painted a deep, peopled vista while EOT set one cut-out sign on flat colour; compare them to choose between the painted destination and the modernist emblem.