Stylogeny combining Brazilian Modernismo Graphics × Czech Poetist Book Design

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Style combination · Pairs well

Brazilian Modernismo Graphics × Czech Poetist Book Design

Two playful letterpress avant-gardes of the 1920s that turned posters, programmes and adverts into poems; Devětsil's photomontage and bars can stand in where Klaxon would use a contour drawing.

From the research on Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)

Mix them and make something Brazilian Modernismo Graphics Czech Poetist Book Design

POPBrazilian Modernismo × Czech Poetist
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Czech Poetist Book Design, their arrangement from Czech Poetist Book Design, the finish from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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 Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil)

Type from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
Colour from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
Form from Czech Poetist Book Design
Composition from Czech Poetist Book Design

Brazilian Modernismo Graphics avoids collage & layering: this is where the two pull against each other.

Surface from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Brazilian Modernismo Graphics

Pop

Anton, standing in for Heavy jobbing grotesque capitals (KLAXON across every Klaxon cover, 1922-23; condensed grotesques for the mock 'Aviso á Praça' and price list)

Text · Czech Poetist Book Design

The book and magazine design of the Czech Devětsil circle, where Karel Teige and his colleagues turned constructivist tools (asymmetry, sans and slab capitals, heavy bars, photomontage) toward Poetism's lyrical celebration of travel, cinema, jazz and the circus. Covers and 'picture poems' set type among postcards, ocean liners and aeroplanes, and in Abeceda (1926) a dancer's body poses as each letter of the alphabet.

Inter; Czech Poetist Book Design used Jobbing grotesque capitals from Prague print shops and Egyptienne slab-serif display capitals

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics, with a counter-accent from Czech Poetist Book Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil)

  • #ece4c8 ground · 36%
  • #1b1915 ink · 14%
  • #d8b628 accent · 18%
  • #c8402a accent · 14%
  • #e08a6c accent · 10%
  • #4f6430 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ece4c8;
  --ink: #1b1915;
  --accent-1: #d8b628;
  --accent-2: #c8402a;
  --accent-3: #e08a6c;
  --accent-4: #4f6430;
  --font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22): Antropofagia's cannibal metaphor and its Tupi words ('Tupy, or not tupy') were a São Paulo elite's figure of speech about Indigenous peoples, not their own voice: borrow the method of swallowing and recombining foreign models, not Tupi people or ritual as decoration. Much of this work is still in copyright in Brazil (life plus 70 years): Guilherme de Almeida (died 1969), Anita Malfatti (1964), Tarsila do Amaral (1973), Di Cavalcanti (1976), John Graz (1980), Paim (1988) and Yan de Almeida Prado (1991); Brecheret (1955) entered the Brazilian public domain on 1 January 2026. A straight green-and-yellow flag pastiche now reads in Brazil as a partisan emblem, so quote Pau Brasil's gesture of rewriting the flag rather than the flag itself.

04

The two styles

1922–1929 · Latin America & Caribbean Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) The print side of São Paulo's Modernismo (1922-29), set in jobbing print shops. Klaxon (1922-23) kept one cover for all its issues: a heavy grotesque title and fat lowercase words locked around a giant condensed A in a second ink, a thick black bar and the number turned on its side, with only the card and ink changing. Its back covers made sponsors' adverts into word games and mocked the sonnet trade. Books brought title pages set as justified letter blocks, Tarsila do Amaral's flag cover for Pau Brasil, and contour drawings like her Abaporu sketch for the Manifesto Antropófago (1928). A retro travel poster reading “SOLAR TRIP” combines a large black-and-white image of a smiling woman in a swimsuit with a coastal town, a vintage bus on a winding seaside road, and divers above the water. Red diagonal shapes, blue stripes and sea, a yellow sun, and rows of dots decorate the cream background. 1922–1938 · Central Europe Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil) The book and magazine design of the Czech Devětsil circle, where Karel Teige and his colleagues turned constructivist tools (asymmetry, sans and slab capitals, heavy bars, photomontage) toward Poetism's lyrical celebration of travel, cinema, jazz and the circus. Covers and 'picture poems' set type among postcards, ocean liners and aeroplanes, and in Abeceda (1926) a dancer's body poses as each letter of the alphabet.

05

More combinations

With Brazilian Modernismo Graphics

With Czech Poetist Book Design

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