Style combination · Pairs well
Brazilian Concrete Design × Di Tella Graphic Design
The other South American modernism of the 1960s; pair São Paulo's concrete modules with Buenos Aires' event-led giant type for a Southern Cone modernist programme.
Mix them and make something Brazilian Concrete Design Di Tella Graphic Design
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.
Brazilian Concrete Design Di Tella Graphic Design (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella)
- Type from Di Tella Graphic Design
- Colour from Brazilian Concrete Design
- Form from Brazilian Concrete Design
- Composition from Brazilian Concrete Design
- Surface from Di Tella Graphic Design
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Di Tella Graphic Design
Grid
Inter Tight, standing in for Helvetica (with other neo-grotesques for titles and fact blocks; identified on the 1962 sculpture-prize poster by the UNCuyo reader)
Text · Brazilian Concrete Design
A São Paulo and Rio movement in which concrete art, concrete poetry and Brazil's first design offices shared one vocabulary: Max Bill's mathematically generated geometry, serial repetition and sans-serif type. Sparked by Bill's 1951 retrospective at MASP and the first São Paulo Bienal, it passed through Ulm via Alexandre Wollner into Forminform (1957) and ESDI (1963), producing rigorous trademarks, posters and a celebrated newspaper redesign.
Jost; Brazilian Concrete Design used Futura and Akzidenz-Grotesk
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Brazilian Concrete Design, with a counter-accent from Di Tella Graphic Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Brazilian Concrete Design Di Tella Graphic Design (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella)
-
#f4f2ecground · 36% -
#121212ink · 14% -
#f3c316accent · 18% -
#e2361faccent · 14% -
#b89668accent · 10% -
#1f4e9eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f2ec;
--ink: #121212;
--accent-1: #f3c316;
--accent-2: #e2361f;
--accent-3: #b89668;
--accent-4: #1f4e9e;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Brazilian Concrete Design
- Op Art Graphics Pairs well · Maluf's repeated rectangles already vibrate; push the serial module towards op moiré for a kinetic poster that stays constructed.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Contrasts · Mexico's figurative, militant linocuts are Latin America's other modernism; contrast them to choose between abstraction and narrative.
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · Bring concrete poetry's spatial word-play into a Swiss grid to make typographic layouts that read as images.
- Andean Woven Graphic Systems Pairs well · Both vary a single module serially; apply the Wari rule of rotating and compressing one unit across a field to a systematic poster or identity.
- Tropicália Graphic Design Contrasts · The Brazilian rational design Duarte trained beside and then swallowed: the 1964 Deus e o Diabo poster keeps concrete's lowercase Helvetica and aligned text blocks, then splits them with one cut-out figure in a sun; the 1968 covers drop the grid altogether.
- Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Contrasts · Brazil's concrete designers worked in the same decades with grids and sans-serifs; set a cordel woodcut against concrete typography for a sharp sertão-versus-São Paulo tension.
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) Pairs well · Almeida's tumbled LACTA advertisement gained new meaning once concrete poetry arrived in the 1950s. Set a Klaxon-style word image on a concrete grid to keep the play of letters but discipline its spacing.
- Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD) Contrasts · The nearest genome: São Paulo and Zagreb both turned constructive geometry and serial units into posters from 1951. Brazilian concrete design prints offset for industry and the press, sets a few geometric elements in tension with a white ground and stays strictly non-figurative; Zagreb screenprints for a gallery and a student theatre, runs one multiplied unit across the sheet, sometimes on metallic paper, against a small band of lowercase grotesque, and with Arsovski breaks the system with photo collage, pop quotation and rebus titles.
With Di Tella Graphic Design
- Op Art Graphics Pairs well · The CLAEM programmes and the Premio Di Tella 64 poster already speak Op; run one heavy grotesque title through an optical field, as Distéfano did, for an event that should vibrate.
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Pairs well · Both made the word the picture in the same years; add Lubalin's tight, playful letter-joins to Di Tella's blunt flat-ink title for a headline-led identity.
- Fileteado Porteño Contrasts · Same city, opposite choice: Buenos Aires' ornamental filete against the Di Tella's ornament-free flat-ink modernism; set side by side they show the porteño vernacular and the porteño avant-garde.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · Cuba's state screenprints used many bright inks for political messages, the Di Tella one or two flat inks for avant-garde events; together they show two Latin American poster cultures of the 1960s.
- Vicente Rojo & Mexican Editorial Modernism Pairs well · Two Latin American cultural presses of the 1960s working in one or two inks: add the Di Tella's giant title word to Rojo's framed image and ordered text for a cultural programme or catalogue.
- Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters) Pairs well · Both make the event title an optical picture for a small cultural institution under tight means; add the Di Tella's one or two flat inks and blunt grotesque to a Lucerne letter construction for a sterner, more 1960s sheet.