Style combination · Pairs well
Spanish Bullfight Poster × Victorian Letterpress
The cartel's lower half is a jobbing printer's bill; set its ranked lines of mixed faces and rules under one painted scene to rebuild the two-zone sheet for any festival programme.
Mix them and make something Spanish Bullfight Poster Victorian Letterpress
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.
Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino) Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from Spanish Bullfight Poster
- Colour from Victorian Letterpress
-
Spanish Bullfight Poster avoids monochrome: this is where the two pull against each other.
- Form from Spanish Bullfight Poster
- Composition from Spanish Bullfight Poster
- Surface from Victorian Letterpress
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Spanish Bullfight Poster
Fiesta
Anton, standing in for Mecana (even-stroke slab serif) and heavy condensed grotesque capitals for the matadors' names, printed in black, red or blue
Text · Victorian Letterpress
The commercial jobbing print of the industrial century: posters, playbills, auction notices and ephemera built from a flood of new display types (fat faces, Egyptians, grotesques, Tuscans and condensed wood type). Lines are centred and each is set in a different face and size to fill the measure, framed in rules and stock borders and printed in black with one or two flat colours.
Zilla Slab; Victorian Letterpress used Fat face romans and Egyptian / Antique slab serifs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Victorian Letterpress, with a counter-accent from Spanish Bullfight Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino) Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
-
#efe4c9ground · 36% -
#1b1a17ink · 14% -
#b3322baccent · 18% -
#dcaa34accent · 14% -
#24477daccent · 10% -
#d8708eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe4c9;
--ink: #1b1a17;
--accent-1: #b3322b;
--accent-2: #dcaa34;
--accent-3: #24477d;
--accent-4: #d8708e;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Zilla Slab", serif;
}Use it with care
Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino): Bullfighting is a living but contested practice, opposed by animal-welfare campaigners in Spain and abroad, so borrowing its imagery for unrelated products brings that dispute with it; the painted manolas also belong to a folkloric picture of Andalusia rather than a record of it. Ruano Llopis (d. 1950), Roberto Domingo (d. 1956) and Juan Reus (d. 2003) are still in copyright in Spain, so paint new pictures in the manner rather than reprinting their motifs.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Spanish Bullfight Poster
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Pair a painted rótulo for a bar or peña with a cartel-style scene and ranked capitals for a festive, local Spanish look.
- Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos) Contrasts · Both print a commissioned academic oil in quantity and add text afterwards, but the calendar gives the painting the whole sheet with a sponsor band, while the cartel keeps a full ranked programme of ring, bulls and matadors below it.
- Spanish Civil War Poster Contrasts · Josep Renau learned lithography at Ortega's Valencia works while a student; his generation traded the cartel's naturalistic brushwork and long programme for flat, foreshortened figures, diagonal slogans and photomontage.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · One grotesque, flush left on a grid, against a centred clamour of mixed faces under a painting: use the pair to decide whether a festival programme needs ceremony or clarity.
- Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas) Contrasts · Both are lithographic trades of the Spanish-speaking world that print naturalistic paintings, but the Havana label frames allegories, medals and arms in borders within borders around a brand lettered on the stone, while the cartel vignettes one scene and sets a long programme below it in type.
- Belle Époque Lithographic Poster Contrasts · Both are colour lithographs for the street, but the Belle Époque artist drew one animated figure and the lettering together on the stone, while the cartel sets a conservative painted scene above a typeset bill it usually keeps apart; borrow the integrated lettering when the programme is short.
- Egyptian Painted Film Poster Contrasts · Both are painted lithographs that announce star performers, but the Egyptian poster collages star heads under huge calligraphic titles, while the cartel paints one scene and names its matadors in set capitals beneath.
With Victorian Letterpress
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign writers and type founders traded letterforms; add brushed shading and drop shadows to wood-type headlines for a street-made feel.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revived Victorian display faces with irony; mix one wood-type headline with modern illustration for the same knowing nostalgia.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · One face, flush left and white space against a centred clamour of faces: use the contrast to test whether hierarchy needs variety at all.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Morris reacted against exactly this commercial clutter; set the two side by side to show craft restraint versus jobbing exuberance.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · A Victorian mixed-face handbill is the clutter Ulm's one-family rule was meant to cure; use it as a before-and-after foil.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Contrasts · Its black-letter-dense, type-and-ornament jobbing page is the opposite of a picture-led page; combine them by hanging a wood-type title over a flat colour picture.
- Dada Pairs well · Raid Victorian wood type and stock ornaments as the Dadaists did, but scatter them instead of centring them.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.