Style combination · Contrasts
Basel Object Poster × West German Conceptual Film
Both isolate one object on a plain ground, but Basel paints a product in glossy lithographic realism to sell it; here the object stands for a film's theme, is cut to a flat silhouette or a grainy photograph, and rarely flatters.
Mix them and make something Basel Object Poster West German Conceptual Film
01
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) West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)
- Type from West German Conceptual Film
- Colour from West German Conceptual Film
- Form from Basel Object 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 · West German Conceptual Film
Yay!
Inter Tight, standing in for Condensed bold grotesque for titles, set tight and often stacked (Panzerkreuzer Potemkin, 1967; Sturm über Asien; Der Malteser Falke, 1972; Rambow's Die Hamletmaschine, 1980)
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 West German Conceptual Film, with a counter-accent from Basel Object Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)
-
#ece7dcground · 36% -
#1b1b1bink · 14% -
#d4441daccent · 18% -
#f0c419accent · 14% -
#2f3f8faccent · 10% -
#908a82accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ece7dc;
--ink: #1b1b1b;
--accent-1: #d4441d;
--accent-2: #f0c419;
--accent-3: #2f3f8f;
--accent-4: #908a82;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Fira Sans", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow): Some posters turn Nazi imagery against itself: a swastika of broken pencils over the 1938 member list of the exiled German PEN (P.E.N. im Exil, 1983) and an egg given Hitler's forelock and moustache (Sein oder Nichtsein, 1964). Displaying Nazi symbols is restricted by law in Germany and several other countries outside contexts such as art, satire, education and history, so keep any such sign unmistakably critical and check the rules where the work will be shown. Rambow's Othello poster (1978) appears to show a face in dark stage make-up, the blackface convention for the role that is now widely rejected: do not borrow it. The posters and their photographs (Hillmann, Rambow, Lienemeyer, van de Sand, Abisag Tüllmann) are in copyright: stage and photograph your own object or cut your own silhouette instead of recreating a poster.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Basel Object Poster
- Art Deco Contrasts · A source as well as a foil: Leupin studied at the École Paul Colin in Paris in 1935-36 and took strong impressions from Colin and from Colin's rival Cassandre. Both make a product a heroic icon, but Deco stylises it into a geometric silhouette with airbrushed gradation and geometric capitals, while Basel paints the real object, its material and its label, as a still life.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · The style that displaced it in the same cities around 1950: a grid, objective photography and a neutral grotesque instead of one painted object and a hand-lettered name. Set the two side by side to show the shift from crafted illusion to systematic information.
- Skeuomorphic UI Pairs well · Skeuomorphic app icons rendered glass, metal and leather the same way for screens; a Basel-style single product with a soft cast shadow on a dark ground makes a strong hero image for packaging or a product launch.
- Plakatstil / Sachplakat Contrasts · Its parent and nearest relative: Berlin's Sachplakat flattens the product into a silhouette in two to four flat colours with heavy block lettering, while Basel paints the same single object in full light and shadow, glass and tweed included. Choose Basel when the material of the product should sell it.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Both paint ordinary things with illusionistic precision until they look strange; borrow a Magritte-like juxtaposition to push a Basel still life from product portrait to visual riddle, as Leupin did with his newspaper and globe.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Both make an icon of a consumer product, but Pop repeats it in flat screenprinted colour with irony, where Basel paints one specimen with reverent, tactile care.
- French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Contrasts · 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.
- Finnish Symbol Poster (the 'Finnish School', 1954–1995) Contrasts · Kamekura compared Varis's humour to Leupin's, but the Basel poster paints the object in glossy relief where the Finnish one flattens it into a sign.
With West German Conceptual Film
- AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Pairs well · Heartfield tied four bloody axes into a swastika in 1934; Rambow's broken pencils laid into a swastika over a 1938 PEN list (1983) make the same move of an object turned into an emblem. Borrow the AIZ caption when the poster must accuse, and Rambow's wordless object when it should commemorate.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · Its contemporary in art-film posters: the Polish school paints the metaphor and letters the title by hand in loose brushwork; take the Kassel route when the same single idea should come from a cropped photograph or a hard silhouette with set grotesque type.
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Pairs well · Hipgnosis also builds impossible scenes for the camera and lets the photograph vouch for them; add Rambow's plain ground and one line of set grotesque when such a staged photo has to work as a street poster rather than a record sleeve.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · The ICAIC film posters of revolutionary Cuba also read a film metaphorically and reduce it to one silhouette or visual pun in screenprint, but they let flat, saturated, Pop and psychedelic colour carry the energy and draw or hand-cut the title letters; the Kassel poster mostly keeps to black and one or two inks, a photograph or a hard silhouette and set grotesque type.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Shares the set grotesque, flat inks and ornament-free ground, but rejects Swiss objectivity: each poster carries one visual metaphor and a new typographic choice per film instead of a grid and a neutral system.
- French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Contrasts · Savignac's visual gag is drawn and painted to make people smile at a product; the Kassel poster finds its pun in photographs and silhouettes, and its humour is darker and aimed at a film's or play's subject.
- Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics Contrasts · Hillmann's posters also refuse star portraits and reduce a film to one sign, but they are static sheets set in grotesque type that often find the sign in a grainy photograph; Bass draws and cuts the sign by hand and builds it as a moving title before it becomes a poster.
- Israeli Political Poster (Tartakover to Lemel) Contrasts · Both can concentrate a poster into a photographed paradox and a set sans-serif title; choose the Israeli dissenting core when Hebrew slogans, national visual memory and the artist as critical witness must carry the argument, rather than a sign extracted from a film or play. Lemel's exhibition and pandemic images remain points of overlap, not a uniquely Israeli photographic technique.