Style combination · Contrasts
Chilean Unidad Popular × International Typographic Style
Hand-drawn letters and irregular contours against the neutral grotesque and grid; use the Chilean mode where a cause needs warmth rather than neutrality.
Mix them and make something Chilean Unidad Popular International Typographic Style
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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 Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics International Typographic Style
- Type from Chilean Unidad Popular
- Colour from International Typographic Style
- Form from Chilean Unidad Popular
- Composition from International Typographic Style
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Chilean Unidad Popular avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Surface from Chilean Unidad Popular
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The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Chilean Unidad Popular
New
Londrina Solid; Chilean Unidad Popular used Hand-drawn closed-form lettering of the Larrea office and Brigada Ramona Parra painted slogan letters
Text · International Typographic Style
A post-war refinement of the New Typography in which the mathematical grid, objective photography and neo-grotesque sans-serifs were used to communicate with clarity and neutrality. Taught at the Basel and Zurich schools, it became the default language of international corporate and institutional communication.
Inter; International Typographic Style used Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from Chilean Unidad Popular. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics International Typographic Style
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#f2f0e9ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#e1251baccent · 18% -
#f5c518accent · 14% -
#1f4e9caccent · 10% -
#7a7a7aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2f0e9;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #e1251b;
--accent-2: #f5c518;
--accent-3: #1f4e9c;
--accent-4: #7a7a7a;
--font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
--font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
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.
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The two styles
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More combinations
With Chilean Unidad Popular
- Chicano Screenprint Poster Pairs well · Both tie community walls to cheap posters for a movement; combine a black-contoured Ramona Parra frieze with Chicano bilingual screenprints for coalition street graphics.
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · Against academic painted realism, the brigades reduced figures to flat colour and black line any team could repeat; set the two side by side to show party art without the easel.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Pairs well · Vicente Larrea named Cuban posters among his influences; take OSPAAAL's single emblematic image and give it the Chilean black contour and hand-drawn letters.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Both are brush-painted street lettering with reinforced outlines; borrow the sign writer's clean letter for a slogan wall that reads at walking pace.
- Lira Popular (Chilean Illustrated Verse Broadsheets) Pairs well · Set a flat-colour Unidad Popular poster beside a black woodcut frieze and ruled verse columns for a Chilean design that spans popular print and political modernism.
- Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20) Contrasts · 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.
- Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters) Pairs well · Contemporary Andean-Pacific reform graphics with black-contoured figures and hand-drawn letters; pair a Ramona Parra emblem frieze with a Peruvian halftone campesino for a coalition poster about land and work.
With International Typographic Style
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Ornamental curves against an orthogonal grid make a strong deliberate tension.
- Brutalist Web Design Pairs well · Strip the grid to raw HTML defaults to get a rawer, contemporary take on Swiss honesty.
- Psychedelic Poster Contrasts · Its exact opposite on legibility; borrow one swirling element to break a too-cold Swiss layout.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Add Japanese restraint and emblematic colour fields to the grid for warmth without losing order.
- American Traditional Tattoo Flash Contrasts · Rational grid and sans-serif against sentimental, hand-lettered emblems: one flash motif on a Swiss layout makes a sharp contrast.
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Contrasts · Put a single tag or throw-up over a strict Swiss grid to stage the clash between institutional order and a street voice.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Set one loud appropriated Pop image inside a strict grid with a neutral grotesque so the irony reads as deliberate rather than chaotic.
- Italian Painted Film Poster (Rome Studios) Contrasts · Grid, restraint and photographic objectivity are the opposite of a crowded painted montage.