Stylogeny combining Basel Object Poster × French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster

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Style combination · Contrasts

Basel Object Poster × French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster

Its Swiss contemporary paints the product as a modelled, larger-than-life icon; choose between wit by cartoon drawing and wit by illusion, or set one against the other.

From the research on French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan)

Mix them and make something Basel Object Poster French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster

WOWBasel Object Poster × French Post-War
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster, their arrangement from Basel Object Poster, the finish from Basel Object Poster. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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.

Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan)

Type from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster
Colour from Basel Object Poster
Form from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster
Composition from Basel Object Poster
Surface from Basel Object Poster

02

The type

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

Display · French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster

Wow

Londrina Solid; French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster used Brand name painted by the artist into the picture, often in bold sans capitals on the product itself and Roman capitals over a lowercase italic line, lettered on the product

Text · Basel Object Poster

The Swiss descendant of the German object poster, made in Zurich and above all Basel from 1919 to the early 1950s. One everyday product (a top hat, a tweed coat, a toothpaste tube, a fountain-pen nib, a match, a curl of butter) is painted larger than life with modelled light, cast shadows and tactile surfaces, set on a plain dark, pale or softly graded ground, with little more than the brand name as text. Rooted in the Neue Sachlichkeit, it raises the product to a quiet, uncanny icon; from about 1940 Leupin and Brun added humour and visual puns.

Fira Sans; Basel Object Poster used Brand name painted on the product and Light italic slogan over a heavy name

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Basel Object Poster, with a counter-accent from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan)

  • #f1ece0 ground · 36%
  • #121212 ink · 14%
  • #f0c419 accent · 18%
  • #d8291f accent · 14%
  • #2f56a6 accent · 10%
  • #8a6a45 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1ece0;
  --ink: #121212;
  --accent-1: #f0c419;
  --accent-2: #d8291f;
  --accent-3: #2f56a6;
  --accent-4: #8a6a45;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan): Savignac, Villemot, Morvan and Carlu are in copyright (Adagp, Paris), and some of their images are still brand property: Savignac's Bic boy is part of the BIC logo, and Orangina reissued Villemot's zest parasol on its bottles in 2011. Invent your own gag for your own product rather than redrawing the Monsavon cow, the Maggi ox or the Bic boy, do not prompt an image model for a named affichiste's hand, and never present a generated image as a vintage affiche.

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The two styles

A large wedge of golden cheese with a dark brown rind marked “ALPINA” and a mountain motif casts a shadow on a cream background. Below it, blue script reads “Pur et vrai” above large red “ALPINA” lettering. 1919–1955 · Central Europe Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) The Swiss descendant of the German object poster, made in Zurich and above all Basel from 1919 to the early 1950s. One everyday product (a top hat, a tweed coat, a toothpaste tube, a fountain-pen nib, a match, a curl of butter) is painted larger than life with modelled light, cast shadows and tactile surfaces, set on a plain dark, pale or softly graded ground, with little more than the brand name as text. Rooted in the Neue Sachlichkeit, it raises the product to a quiet, uncanny icon; from about 1940 Leupin and Brun added humour and visual puns. A stylised woman with short black hair sits with her knees raised, wearing a blue swimsuit and holding a yellow drink with a red-and-white striped straw. Above her, large hand-painted letters read “SOLEILADE,” with the yellow O surrounded by sun rays on a cream background. 1948–1979 · Western Europe French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) The humorous street poster of post-war Paris, which took off in 1949 when Raymond Savignac and Bernard Villemot showed their rejected projects together and Savignac's Monsavon cow, its udder filling a bar of soap, went up on the walls. With Hervé Morvan they reduced each advertisement to one cartoon gag whose punchline is the product: a stylised figure brushed in a few bright colours on a plain ground, the brand name drawn into the picture and almost no other copy, printed as large colour lithographs until agency photography pushed it aside in the 1970s.

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More combinations

With Basel Object Poster

With French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster

Every style combination