Style combination · Pairs well

Atelier Populaire × Gráfica del 68

Paris and Mexico City made the same unsigned, one-ink protest posters in the same year, largely without knowing each other's work; combine the Atelier's brushed silhouettes with the Mexican linocut and Olympic parody for graphics that answer a specific official image.

From the research on Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)

Mix them and make something Atelier Populaire Gráfica del 68

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Atelier Populaire, their arrangement from Atelier Populaire, the finish from Gráfica del 68. 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.

Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)

Type from Gráfica del 68: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Atelier Populaire: Monochrome
Flat fields
Form from Atelier Populaire: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Atelier Populaire: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from Gráfica del 68: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

The type

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

Display · Gráfica del 68

Noise

Permanent Marker; Gráfica del 68 used Capitals cut into the linoleum block together with the image and Brushed and stencilled slogans on cardboard placards and cloth mantas

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 Atelier Populaire, with a counter-accent from Gráfica del 68. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)

#f2eee3 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#cf2027 accent · 18%
#23408e accent · 14%
#a9845b accent · 10%
#d9d1bf accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2eee3;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #cf2027;
  --accent-2: #23408e;
  --accent-3: #a9845b;
  --accent-4: #d9d1bf;
  --font-display: "Permanent Marker", cursive;
  --font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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.

Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics): These images answered real repression: soldiers entered the schools, a raid on San Carlos destroyed its workshop and prints, and the number of people killed at Tlatelolco on 2 October 1968 is still not known, so do not use the bloodied dove, the gorilla or Tlatelolco imagery as edgy styling for a brand, a product or an Olympic-themed event. Mexiac's chained, gagged figure is a Tzotzil man, drawn in 1954 against the coup in Guatemala; do not turn it into a generic mascot of silencing. The makers agreed not to sign their work, for the movement's sake and for their own safety, and many attributions are later and disputed (the dove placard among them), so credit works as 'attributed to' or to the brigade, and never present a pastiche as a 1968 original.

The two styles

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.

A black woodcut-style figure raises a clenched fist and opens their mouth as if shouting against a textured cream background. Large red lettering across the bottom reads “ORGANÍZATE.”

1968 · Latin America & Caribbean Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics) The graphics of the 1968 Mexican student movement, made in days by brigades in the print workshops of San Carlos and La Esmeralda and in improvised school workshops. Unsigned linocuts, silkscreens, stencilled placards and tiny pegas (stickers) set one quick emblem against a short slogan, mostly black and red on newsprint or card, and turned the state's own Olympic dove, México 68 logotype and pictograms against it, beside bayonets, tanks, the padlocked mouth, the club-wielding gorilla of repression and jailed leaders such as Demetrio Vallejo behind bars.