Style combination · Contrasts

Atelier Populaire × Grapus

The founders came out of the 1968 workshops, but the Beaux-Arts atelier pulled one flat ink, one brushed silhouette and a slogan in rough capitals; Grapus layers photographs, paint and coloured handwriting, mostly on white. Use the first for overnight urgency, Grapus for a warmer, longer campaign.

From the research on Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective)

Mix them and make something Atelier Populaire Grapus

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Atelier Populaire, their arrangement from Atelier Populaire, the finish from Grapus. 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) Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective)

Type from Grapus: Hand-lettering
Rotated & vertical setting
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 Grapus: Painterly brushwork

The type

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

Display · Grapus

Now!

Caveat, standing in for Handwriting in brush, felt-tip marker and crayon, written on the artwork in capitals or mixed case and often running sideways or round the picture, as on Poésies Aubervilliers (1983) and Peace! (1990)

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 Grapus. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective)

#f2eee3 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#cf2027 accent · 18%
#f5c518 accent · 14%
#23408e accent · 10%
#b4875a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2eee3;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #cf2027;
  --accent-2: #f5c518;
  --accent-3: #23408e;
  --accent-4: #b4875a;
  --font-display: "Caveat", 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.

Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective): Grapus images were conceived and signed collectively, and Pierre Bernard and his former colleagues publicly disputed authorship and copyright in 2006, after his Erasmus Prize and a poster catalogue, so credit 'Grapus' rather than one designer; logos such as the Secours populaire's winged hand belong to the organisations that commissioned them, and the posters' party symbols and partisan slogans (the hammer and sickle, the PLO line on Palestine) should not be reused as neutral decoration.

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. 1970–1990 · Western Europe Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective) The posters and identities of Grapus, a Paris collective founded in 1970 by Communist Party members who had met in the 1968 poster workshops. Signed only 'Grapus' and the year, they served the PCF, the CGT union, suburban towns, theatres and causes, later ministries and museums: one visual idea or pun, on white paper or as a whole-sheet flag, photograph or night sky, photographs painted over beside childlike drawings, and handwritten slogans running round the image, militant but joyful. Split over the Louvre commission, the group dissolved at the end of 1990 (formally on 1 January 1991).