Style combination · Pairs well

Atelier Populaire × Ultras Graphics

The type designer Alessio D'Ellena, quoted by Vice, places ultras' vernacular letters 'more in the tradition of' the Atelier Populaire's anonymous May '68 posters; borrow their single brushed slogan and anonymous signature for a banner with something to say.

From the research on Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

Mix them and make something Atelier Populaire Ultras Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Atelier Populaire, their arrangement from Atelier Populaire, the finish from Atelier Populaire. 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) Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

Type from Ultras Graphics: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Ultras Graphics: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Atelier Populaire: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Atelier Populaire: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from Atelier Populaire: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

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

Display · Ultras Graphics

Fiesta

Big Shoulders; Ultras Graphics used The 'Ultras Liberi' genre and Set display faces enlarged and painted by hand

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

Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

#f4f1ea ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#f2b705 accent · 18%
#cf2027 accent · 14%
#23408e accent · 10%
#1f7a3e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1ea;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #f2b705;
  --accent-2: #cf2027;
  --accent-3: #23408e;
  --accent-4: #1f7a3e;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --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.

Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo): Ultras graphics belong to living, often closed supporters' groups whose banner, name and emblem stand for the group itself, so do not lift a real group's name, logo or lettering for a brand, campaign or fashion line as if it were anonymous street style. The language carries the political baggage of both extremes of 1970s street politics: Vice and Scalcione trace the 'Ultras Liberi' lettering to French and Italian far-right lettering, and some curve, such as S.S. Lazio's Ultras (1974), are known for fascist slogans, but group names such as Commando, Brigate and Fedayn were borrowed from political marches, and many 1970s ultras came from the extra-parliamentary left, Lotta Continua above all, so the same sign can mean opposite things in two curve; check what a borrowed symbol or slogan has meant in that curva before using it. Fare's guide to discriminatory practices in European football lists the SS Totenkopf skull, Sig and Odal runes, the Wolfsangel, the Celtic cross (often in place of an 'O') and the code '88' among the far-right symbols seen in stadiums on banners, stickers and shirts: never use them, and keep a borrowed skull clearly apart from the Totenkopf, as the guide does. Nazi symbols are banned by law in Germany, Austria, Poland and other countries, and UEFA fined Germany's football association after its fans showed a neo-Nazi flag at Euro 2012. Memorial displays and murals, for the 74 dead of Port Said in 2012, 72 of them Al Ahly supporters, or the Superga air crash of 1949, are acts of mourning, not decoration. In Egypt a Cairo court banned all ultras groups in May 2015 and members have been arrested since; do not attribute new work to Egyptian ultras groups or their members. Flares and smoke are dangerous and banned in many stadiums; do not present pyrotechnics as a device to imitate.

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. 1968–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & North Africa, Southeast Asia, North America Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo) The graphic language of Italy's organised football supporters, the ultras, from the late 1960s, and of the groups that copied them across Europe, North Africa and beyond. Each group paints its name in huge, squared, tightly packed capitals on a long cloth hung along the railing of the curva, in the club's colours alone. For big matches the whole stand becomes one picture of cards, flags, smoke and giant painted sheets, and one-colour stickers and murals carry the same names, skulls and borrowed pop icons into the city.