Style combination · Contrasts
Brazilian Concrete Design × Zagreb Modernist Graphics
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.
Mix them and make something Brazilian Concrete Design Zagreb Modernist Graphics
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 Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)
- Type from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
- Colour from Brazilian Concrete Design
- Form from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
- Composition from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
- Surface from Brazilian Concrete Design
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Zagreb Modernist Graphics
Index
Inter Tight, standing in for Lowercase neo-grotesque sans for titles and credits on Picelj's New Tendencies posters ('nove tendencije 2', 1963; 'nova tendencija 3', 1965; the five-language programme of 'tendencije 4', 1969)
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 Zagreb Modernist Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Brazilian Concrete Design Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)
-
#f4f2ecground · 36% -
#121212ink · 14% -
#f3c316accent · 18% -
#e2361faccent · 14% -
#1f4e9eaccent · 10% -
#4a2c86accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f2ec;
--ink: #121212;
--accent-1: #f3c316;
--accent-2: #e2361f;
--accent-3: #1f4e9e;
--accent-4: #4a2c86;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD): Picelj (died 2011), Arsovski (died 2020) and Bućan (died 2023) are recent and their posters remain in copyright, Arsovski's Teatar &TD logo is still in use, and Boris Ljubičić's 1979 circle symbol is the permanent emblem of the International Committee of the Mediterranean Games, so borrow the method (a multiplied unit, a lowercase credit line, a rebus title) rather than reproducing a particular poster or mark. Do not dress the style in red stars or party slogans as period decor: these designers worked for galleries and theatres in socialist Yugoslavia and deliberately avoided propaganda imagery.
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.
- Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto) Contrasts · São Paulo's two letter cultures met at the Bienal: concrete design grew out of the first Bienal in 1951, and pixadores wrote across the 28th in 2008. A rational sans on a grid against a wall of tag reto stages the city's divide between institutional modernism and the periphery.
With Zagreb Modernist Graphics
- Total Design & Dutch Functionalism Contrasts · Both make an institution recognisable by its letters and grids, but Total Design applies one impersonal programme across clients, while on Picelj's gallery posters the unit changes with every artist shown and Arsovski breaks the order with collage, pop photographs and rebuses.
- Op Art Graphics Pairs well · The New Tendencies shows in Zagreb were one of op art's sources; take op's vibrating line fields and hold them inside Picelj's square module and small lowercase credit line for a gallery poster that stays systematic.
- Zagreb School of Animated Film Pairs well · The same city and years, with EXAT's Vlado Kristl and Aleksandar Srnec working on Zagreb Film cartoons; set a flat, satirical Zagreb-school figure against a grid of repeated units or letters for a festival poster.
- Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri) Contrasts · Milan's industrial modernism also builds posters from primitives and numerals, but prints offset for corporate patrons, overlaps transparent colour planes on generous white ground and loosens them with photomontage; Zagreb screenprints a few opaque inks for a gallery and a theatre and lets one multiplied unit or letter group fill the sheet against a small lowercase title band.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · Its socialist-era neighbour solved theatre and film posters with one painted, hand-lettered metaphor; Zagreb solves them with set type, repeated geometry and photographic collage, so compare the two to choose between the painter's hand and the typographer's system.
- NSK Retro-Avant-Garde Contrasts · A later Yugoslav answer to power: Ljubljana's retro-avant-garde of the 1980s lifts socialist, Nazi and religious emblems whole and joins them in solemn heraldry, while Zagreb's designers of the 1950s–70s kept such emblems out and built their posters from abstract units and letters; choose between impersonating power through its symbols and a sign system with none.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Critics compare Arsovski's 1960s posters to Push Pin's: borrow Push Pin's period-pastiche lettering and add Arsovski's photo collage and rebus titles for a witty cultural poster.