Style combination · Contrasts

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics × Chilean Unidad Popular

Víctor Jara's songs and portraits returned to the walls in 2019, but the Unidad Popular's party brigades and Larrea sleeves painted a planned, utopian Chile in flat Pop colours, while the revolt's anonymous photocopies attack power in black and one red; set them side by side to show hope organised against rage improvised.

From the research on Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)

Mix them and make something Chilean Estallido Social Graphics Chilean Unidad Popular

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics, their arrangement from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics, the finish from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20) Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics

Type from Chilean Unidad Popular: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Chilean Unidad Popular: Flat fields
Primary triad
Form from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics: Collage & layering
Horror vacui
Surface from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics: Photocopy & distress
Painterly brushwork

The type

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

Display · Chilean Unidad Popular

Act

Londrina Solid; Chilean Unidad Popular used Hand-drawn closed-form lettering of the Larrea office and Brigada Ramona Parra painted slogan letters

Text · Chilean Estallido Social Graphics

The street graphics of Chile's popular revolt, from 18 October 2019 to the March 2020 lockdowns, when a leaderless movement covered Santiago's Plaza de la Dignidad, the Alameda and other cities' walls. Photocopied paste-ups, stencils, linocuts, brushed murals, painted cloth banners and sprayed slogans pile into palimpsests, pasted again as soon as they are painted out. A small shared stock of signs recurs, above all the black riot dog Negro Matapacos in his red kerchief and the wounded eye, beside black-humoured attacks on power and many-coloured shrines to the dead and wounded.

Comic Neue; Chilean Estallido Social Graphics used Brushed and spray-painted capitals of the rayados on walls, shutters and hoardings ('ESTADO VIOLADOR / Vamos a cobrar' in heavy black brush letters on red), with the street's spellings such as 'KLLE' for calle and 'kiltro' for quiltro and Marker hand-lettering on cardboard placards and bedsheet banners, in capitals or plain handwriting, sometimes each letter in a different colour ('CHILE DESPERTÓ')

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Chilean Unidad Popular, with a counter-accent from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20) Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics

#f2ede1 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#f5c518 accent · 18%
#d0202e accent · 14%
#1f4fa0 accent · 10%
#5b2a86 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2ede1;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #f5c518;
  --accent-2: #d0202e;
  --accent-3: #1f4fa0;
  --accent-4: #5b2a86;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Comic Neue", cursive;
}

Use it with care

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20): This is the work of a living movement made under real repression: by the end of January 2020 the INDH had counted 427 people with eye injuries at the hands of the police, and some 460 eye injuries by mid-March, and protesters such as Gustavo Gatica were blinded, so do not use bleeding or patched eyes, victims' portraits or the red-kerchiefed dog as edgy styling, merchandise or a brand backdrop. Its imagined executions of named, living politicians (hanged effigies and photomontages), its posters calling for police to be set on fire ('LOS PACOS SON INFLAMABLES', 'FUEGO A LA YUTA') and slogans such as 'matapacos' ('cop-killer') and 'ACAB' are documents of rage, not tropes to reuse; the Wenufoye belongs to the Mapuche people and stands for their own political cause, so do not use it as decoration. Most makers were anonymous and the revolt is still contested in Chile, where in 2022 a UDI deputy said he would summon the culture minister over an exhibition of its art; do not attribute unsigned works to named people, and never present a generated image as a work of the revolt.

Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics: The Brigada Ramona Parra still paints and remains closely tied to Chile's Communist Youth and Communist Party, and the Larrea office's posters and sleeves are living designers' work: Vicente Larrea publicly called the 2022 Rechazo campaign's reuse of 'La felicidad de Chile comienza por los niños' a plagiarism. Víctor Jara was killed after the 1973 coup and brigade members were persecuted. Credit the makers and ask the brigade or the office before quoting their work, rather than stripping it into generic retro-revolutionary styling.

The two styles

A distressed protest poster centres a woman looking upward with a raised fist, surrounded by masked demonstrators, red and blue flags, apartment buildings, red flowers and a flying bird. Large rough lettering across the top reads “OTRO MAÑANA” amid torn-looking patches of red, purple, blue, black and cream.

2019–2022 · Latin America & Caribbean Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20) The street graphics of Chile's popular revolt, from 18 October 2019 to the March 2020 lockdowns, when a leaderless movement covered Santiago's Plaza de la Dignidad, the Alameda and other cities' walls. Photocopied paste-ups, stencils, linocuts, brushed murals, painted cloth banners and sprayed slogans pile into palimpsests, pasted again as soon as they are painted out. A small shared stock of signs recurs, above all the black riot dog Negro Matapacos in his red kerchief and the wounded eye, beside black-humoured attacks on power and many-coloured shrines to the dead and wounded.

Three stylised agricultural workers look upward, with the central figure raising a hoe against a large yellow sun. Yellow wheat fills the foreground, and large red lettering reads “TIERRA VIVA” at the upper right.

1967–1973 · Latin America & Caribbean Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics The graphics of the Nueva Canción Chilena and Allende's Unidad Popular, 1967–1973. In the Larrea brothers' office, DICAP record sleeves and posters joined high-contrast photographs, flat inks, closed forms with irregular contours and hand-drawn lettering. On the street, the Brigada Ramona Parra painted slogans, then long murals of fists, stars, birds, workers and faces in basic flat colours bounded by thick black strokes. The 1973 coup closed DICAP and erased the murals. The brigades returned to the streets before the 1988 plebiscite and still paint; the Larrea office worked into the 2020s.

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