Style combination · Pairs well
Beggarstaffs Poster × Plakatstil
Bernhard and Hohlwein later made the flat silhouette and plain lettering a commercial system; Plakatstil is a later descendant, not a source.
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.
Beggarstaffs Poster (Nicholson & Pryde) Plakatstil / Sachplakat
- Type from Plakatstil
- Colour from Plakatstil
- Form from Beggarstaffs Poster
- Composition from Beggarstaffs Poster
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Plakatstil avoids collage & layering: this is where the two pull against each other.
- Surface from Beggarstaffs Poster
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Plakatstil
Hello
Big Shoulders, standing in for Lucian Bernhard's hand-drawn block lettering
Text · Beggarstaffs Poster
Posters designed by William Nicholson and James Pryde under the pseudonym J. & W. Beggarstaff: shapes cut from paper and shifted about a board until the silhouette worked, then executed by stencil (Hamlet was stencilled on brown wrapping paper, with details added by hand) in a few flat colours. Figures are left partly incomplete for the viewer to finish. Unlike the later Plakatstil, a commercial system of silhouette and plain lettering, this was a cut-paper collage method made by a studio of two; few designs were printed and they were too avant-garde for the advertisers of the day.
Bodoni Moda; Beggarstaffs Poster used Hand-drawn poster lettering and Plain Victorian sans-serif capitals
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Plakatstil, with a counter-accent from Beggarstaffs Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Beggarstaffs Poster (Nicholson & Pryde) Plakatstil / Sachplakat
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#151515ground · 36% -
#efe5cfink · 14% -
#d2382baccent · 18% -
#e8b923accent · 14% -
#7a4a2baccent · 10% -
#24418faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #151515;
--ink: #efe5cf;
--accent-1: #d2382b;
--accent-2: #e8b923;
--accent-3: #7a4a2b;
--accent-4: #24418f;
--font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Beggarstaffs Poster
With Plakatstil
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · Its brand-name-plus-object formula prefigures logo-led identity; pair it with a modernist grid for confident product campaigns.
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Contrasts · Against a crowded multi-face bill, one object and one word show how much attention reduction can win.
- Flat Design Pairs well · Sachplakat is the ancestor of the flat product hero; borrow its single-object discipline to sharpen app and packaging graphics.
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · It was conceived against Jugendstil ornament; set a bare object poster beside a floral frame to dramatise clarity versus decoration.
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss 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.
- Vietnamese Propaganda Poster (Tranh cổ động) Pairs well · Both reduce the message to one flat figure or object and hand-drawn words; use Plakatstil's plain ground to calm a busy red poster.
- London Transport Design Contrasts · The Sachplakat reduced every poster to one object and a brand name, while Pick let each artist choose a different picture inside a fixed frame; use the contrast to decide between one formula and a curated plurality.
- Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich) Pairs well · The NDB places Heine's posters at the start of the new poster style: borrow the Sachplakat's single object and bold block lettering for a satirical poster that keeps Simplicissimus's flat silhouette and red-on-black.