Style combination · Contrasts
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics × Cuban Revolutionary Poster
ICAIC's film posters also read a film through one silhouette or pun, but in saturated, clashing screenprint colour for a revolutionary public; Bass keeps to one or two flat colours and black, and the symbol's real home is the moving title.
Mix them and make something Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics Cuban Revolutionary Poster
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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.
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)
- Type from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- Colour from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- Form from Cuban Revolutionary Poster
- Composition from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- Surface from Cuban Revolutionary Poster
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The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
Hello
Londrina Solid; Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics used Ragged, paper-cut display lettering with a 'subtly jagged imprecision', drawn and cut in the studio and by freelance letterers and Plain sans-serif credits moved as graphic elements
Text · Cuban Revolutionary Poster
The poster culture of revolutionary Cuba, produced for the film institute ICAIC and the solidarity organisation OSPAAAL. With no commercial advertising and scarce materials, designers made bold silkscreen and offset posters that combined Pop and psychedelic colour, op-art pattern, flat silhouettes and single conceptual images, for cinema and for internationalist causes from Vietnam to Africa.
Archivo; Cuban Revolutionary Poster used Hand-cut silkscreen display lettering and Neo-grotesque sans captions repeated in Spanish, English, French and Arabic
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The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics, with a counter-accent from Cuban Revolutionary Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)
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#111111ground · 36% -
#efe9dcink · 14% -
#e0461faccent · 18% -
#f5b81caccent · 14% -
#2d4f8eaccent · 10% -
#9a9894accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #111111;
--ink: #efe9dc;
--accent-1: #e0461f;
--accent-2: #f5b81c;
--accent-3: #2d4f8e;
--accent-4: #9a9894;
--font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics: The posters, title sequences, film scores and corporate marks are in copyright, and several logos are still registered trademarks: borrow the method (one cut symbol, a flat ground, bars that assemble in time), never a specific arm, spiral, dissected body or logo, and do not present new work as a Bass design. Credit Elaine Bass and the letterers where the record names them rather than attributing everything to Saul.
04
The two styles
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More combinations
With Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics
- West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow) 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.
- UPA & Cartoon Modern Pairs well · Its Los Angeles neighbour in flat, modern animation: borrow UPA's caricatured cast when a title needs characters, and keep Bass's single symbol and bars when it needs suspense.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · Bass carried the same reduction to one symbol into the Bell System, Continental and United logos; pair the two when a brand needs an animated mark rather than a static emblem.
- American Mid-Century Modernism Pairs well · Its print parent, which already counts Bass among its makers: take Rand's or Lustig's cut-paper wit on the page, and the Bass branch when the single idea has to move, assemble in time and set a mood before a story begins.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · The Polish film poster also distorts the body into a metaphor, but paints it in loose brushwork with painterly texture; Bass cuts it into hard, flat paper shapes on an empty ground.
With Cuban Revolutionary Poster
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · Cuba largely avoided Soviet painted realism; set a flat silhouette against a heroic painting to show abstraction carrying politics.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Militant, colourful single-image posters versus neutral corporate systems; use the Cuban mode where a cause needs urgency.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · Pair Pop's flat, brand-like imagery with Cuban single-idea silhouettes for bold campaign posters.
- Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics) Contrasts · OSPAAAL and ICAIC posters were planned, many-coloured and made to last, while the 68 brigades printed one ink for the next march; choose Cuba for a solidarity campaign, 68 for an emergency.
- Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters) Pairs well · Both are state poster programmes that took up pop and op colour; give an OSPAAAL-style single emblem Ruiz Durand's comic contour and enlarged dot ground for a campaign that must read from across a village square.
- Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster (DIVEDCO & ICP) Pairs well · Both are state-backed Caribbean silkscreen cultures for cinema and the arts, and Puerto Rico's began more than a decade before ICAIC's workshop; combine ICAIC's single conceptual image with Homar's hand-drawn Spanish lettering built into it.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Contrasts · Same decade, opposite means: ICAIC's silkscreened film posters and OSPAAAL's mostly offset solidarity posters were polished, many-coloured and made to last, while the Atelier's one anonymous ink was pulled overnight for the next morning's wall; decide which of the two the brief needs.
- Spanish Civil War Poster Contrasts · Cuba kept the raised fist but traded urgent painted bodies for one witty silhouette; use the pair to choose between urgency and wit.