Style combination · Pairs well

Atelier Populaire × Syrian Revolution Graphics

Both are anonymous collectives that argue out one figure and one punning slogan together; borrow May '68's single flat ink for a Syrian poster that must print cheaply.

From the research on Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)

Mix them and make something Atelier Populaire Syrian Revolution Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Atelier Populaire, their arrangement from Atelier Populaire, the finish from Syrian Revolution Graphics. 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) Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)

Type from Syrian Revolution Graphics: Brush & pen calligraphy
Hand-lettering
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 Syrian Revolution Graphics: Halftone & Ben-Day dots
Grain & noise

Atelier Populaire avoids halftone & ben-day dots: this is where the two pull against each other.

The type

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

Display · Syrian Revolution Graphics

Riot

Rakkas, standing in for Freely brushed Arabic calligraphy for one- or two-word slogans, composed for each poster rather than typed in a stock font; one member said he sometimes spent two days designing a single word such as 'freedom' or 'revolution', and that some pieces drew on Persian calligraphy (Al-Safir interview, 2012)

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 Syrian Revolution Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)

#f2eee3 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#cf2027 accent · 18%
#23408e accent · 14%
#e0912f accent · 10%
#b4875a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2eee3;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #cf2027;
  --accent-2: #23408e;
  --accent-3: #e0912f;
  --accent-4: #b4875a;
  --font-display: "Rakkas", 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.

Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives): These graphics come from an uprising met with massacres, sieges, detention and disappearance, and their makers worked under pseudonyms at real risk: Raed Fares and Hamoud Junaid were shot dead in Kafranbel on 23 November 2018 (local activists blamed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which did not claim it), and the collective signed only with its own name, so never attribute a poster to an individual member or expose anyone who made this work. The martyr, siege, bread and Hama motifs refer to real massacres and real dead, not to an edgy 'war poster' look. The collective's posters were released under Creative Commons BY-NC, so do not use them or close pastiches commercially, and credit the collective, Kafranbel and the Creative Memory archive. The three-star flag has been the state flag since the HTS-dominated caretaker government took it up after Assad's fall, so using it, or Kafranbel's banners, as generic 'Syria' branding can imply an alignment their makers never gave. Have every Arabic line read by a fluent reader, never fill a design with pseudo-Arabic, do not mock the broken English of some banners, which was written to be understood abroad, and never present a generated image as a work of the uprising.

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-and-cream image of a child reaching toward a green flying dove appears beneath large red Arabic brush lettering. Ruined buildings and rubble stretch along the lower right against a textured cream background.

2011–2024 · Middle East & North Africa Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives) Protest graphics of the Syrian uprising from 2011, made to be photographed and shared online rather than to last on a wall. In Kafranbel, a town in Idlib, calligraphers lettered Raed Fares's weekly slogans on white cloth in Arabic and often in English for audiences abroad, beside Ahmad Jalal's dark cartoons that parodied Western films and album covers. The anonymous collective The Syrian People Know Their Way posted posters for activists to print: one figure in halftone, silhouette or loose outline under a brushed Arabic slogan, answering the Assad cult's monolithic iconography.