Style combination · Pairs well
Brazilian Modernismo Graphics × Estridentismo Graphics
Two Latin American avant-gardes launched within two months of each other (Actual No. 1 in December 1921, the Semana in February 1922). Pair Klaxon's shared-letter letterpress cover with a Stridentist woodcut skyline for a 1920s magazine that is both witty and machine-mad.
Mix them and make something Brazilian Modernismo Graphics Estridentismo 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 Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics
- Type from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
- Colour from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
- Form from Estridentismo Graphics
- Composition from Estridentismo Graphics
- Surface from Estridentismo 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
Noise
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 · Estridentismo Graphics
Mexico's first avant-garde (1921-27), launched when Manuel Maples Arce pasted his manifesto Actual No. 1 on Mexico City walls. Irradiador (1923) boxed heavy block capitals between thick black rules beside a giant issue numeral in one bright ink; woodcuts and drawings by Jean Charlot, Ramón Alva de la Canal and Leopoldo Méndez show skyscrapers seen steeply from below, radio masts and faceted machines beside Mexican workers. In Xalapa, pictured as Estridentópolis, a city of radio, Horizonte (1926-27) set block mastheads over full-colour covers of torch-bearers, agaves and tiled roofs.
Archivo; Estridentismo Graphics used Heavy condensed block capitals and Hand-cut woodcut capitals
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Brazilian Modernismo Graphics, with a counter-accent from Estridentismo Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics
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#ece4c8ground · 36% -
#1b1915ink · 14% -
#d8b628accent · 18% -
#e0552baccent · 14% -
#be2d33accent · 10% -
#e08a6caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ece4c8;
--ink: #1b1915;
--accent-1: #d8b628;
--accent-2: #e0552b;
--accent-3: #be2d33;
--accent-4: #e08a6c;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", 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
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More combinations
With Brazilian Modernismo Graphics
- Tropicália Graphic Design Pairs well · Tropicália revived Oswald de Andrade's Antropofagia as 'antropofagia visual' in the late 1960s; combine Klaxon's spare two-ink letterpress with Tropicália's saturated collage when a Brazilian theme needs both wit and heat.
- Brazilian Concrete Design 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.
- Vorticism & BLAST Typography Contrasts · Both set heavy jobbing grotesque with thick rules and bars in a little magazine, BLAST in 1914 and Klaxon in 1922; BLAST shouts lists beside machine abstractions, Klaxon keeps one quiet cover forme, jokes about the sonnet trade and draws figures in contour.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Neutral grid and one sans against a jobbing case of mixed faces, broken words and mock adverts: set a Klaxon cover beside a Swiss poster to show order against irony.
- Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil) Pairs well · 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.
- Art Deco Contrasts · The same decade with opposite manners: Deco's gold and luxury against Klaxon's tinted card, single ink and jokes about the sonnet trade.
With Estridentismo Graphics
- Art Deco Pairs well · Both drew the 1920s skyline; pair Deco's setback towers and block display letters with Stridentist black-and-white relief for a skyscraper poster with a rougher, revolutionary edge.
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Contrasts · Same Mexico City walls a generation apart: Posada's broadsheets of skeletons, crimes and saints against Maples Arce's broadside of radio, speed and skyscrapers; set one beside the other to stage folk memory against the machine future.
- Russian Constructivism Pairs well · Two post-revolutionary avant-gardes: borrow Constructivism's thick bars and heavy grotesque to steady a Stridentist cover, but keep the hand-cut woodcut instead of photomontage.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Pairs well · Leopoldo Méndez carried the Stridentist woodcut into the Taller de Gráfica Popular in 1937; give a TGP print a radio mast or a skyline on a steep diagonal and one bright ink to bring back the machine-age optimism.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Both cut wood by hand, for opposite ends: Arts and Crafts used the block to flee the machine, Stridentism used it to celebrate radio masts and factories.