Style combination · Contrasts
Russian Constructivism × Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
Bortnyik and Kassák's circle moved towards construction in Vienna exile; set photomontage, grids and sans-serif bars against the hand-drawn heroic body to show that turn.
Mix them and make something Russian Constructivism Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
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.
Russian Constructivism Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
- Type from Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
- Colour from Russian Constructivism
- Form from Russian Constructivism
- Composition from Russian Constructivism
- Surface from Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
Act
Big Shoulders, standing in for Heavy hand-drawn poster capitals for short Hungarian slogans and dates, lettered on the stone with the figure
Text · Russian Constructivism
Constructivism rejected art for art's sake in favour of the artist-engineer building useful things for the new Soviet society. In posters, books, film publicity and state advertising it fused bold grotesque type, heavy bars, photomontage and diagonal axes into an urgent, utilitarian language of agitation that shaped modern graphic design worldwide.
Archivo; Russian Constructivism used Soviet heavy grotesques and Rodchenko's constructed block lettering
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Russian Constructivism, with a counter-accent from Hungarian Revolutionary Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Russian Constructivism Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
-
#efe6d2ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#d1261caccent · 18% -
#c9b28aaccent · 14% -
#c8952faccent · 10% -
#6b6b66accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe6d2;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #d1261c;
--accent-2: #c9b28a;
--accent-3: #c8952f;
--accent-4: #6b6b66;
--font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Hungarian Revolutionary Poster: Biró's red hammer man 'has been much repeated in Central European political iconography up to the present day' (MoMA), so it is still a live political sign. These are propaganda posters of a regime whose 133 days included the Red Terror, in which up to 590 people were killed; do not present them as neutral folk heroics. In Hungary the hammer and sickle and the five-pointed red star are restricted symbols under Btk. § 335 when distributed, used in public or displayed in a way that can disturb public peace, especially by offending the dignity of the victims of totalitarian regimes; keep them out of work aimed there. Never borrow the antisemitic 'Jewish Bolshevik' caricature that anti-communist posters of 1919 turned against the Republic, as in Manno Miltiades's poster in the USHMM's Katz Ehrenthal Collection.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Russian Constructivism
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Punk borrowed Constructivist red-and-black agitprop; combine photomontage with xerox grit for protest graphics.
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · Tame Constructivist diagonals with a Swiss grid for informational work that still feels urgent.
- Art Deco Contrasts · Deco used similar geometry to sell luxury; set the two side by side to decide whether a layout should glamorise or agitate.
- Belle Époque Lithographic Poster Contrasts · Sensual drawn figures versus photomontaged workers: use the contrast to choose between seduction and mobilisation.
- ROSTA Windows Contrasts · In the same revolutionary years the ROSTA windows used stencilled cartoon frames and rhymed captions instead of photomontage and set grotesques; compare them to choose between folk legibility and machine-age form.
- Suprematism Pairs well · Add photomontage and heavy grotesque slogans to Suprematist floating planes to turn pure form into a message.
- British Style Press (The Face, i-D and Arena) Pairs well · Brody's source: take Rodchenko's diagonals, heavy bars and huge constructed letters, swap agitprop for fashion and club culture, and you get a Face spread.
- Mavo Pairs well · Borrow Constructivism's heavy bars and one red ink to steady a Mavo page, but keep Mavo's hand-drawn characters and abstract machine linocuts instead of a single clear slogan.
With Hungarian Revolutionary Poster
- Expressionist Woodcut Graphics Pairs well · Kinchin sees 'a burgeoning taste for Futurist and Expressionist design' in the MA circle's exhibition poster (Bortnyik); add a gouged, splintered edge to the red body when the hero should look anguished rather than triumphant.
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · Both glorify the worker, but 1919 Budapest set a single red, mythic body against a plain ground where Soviet doctrine later demanded polychrome, illusionistic scenes of real workers and leaders; compare them to choose between mythic energy and illusionist credibility.
- ROSTA Windows Contrasts · Same year, opposite format: Moscow's stencilled comic-strip frames tell the news in sequence, Budapest's single lithographed giant states one demand at street scale.
- Spanish Civil War Poster Pairs well · Both throw one bursting figure across a red-and-black lithograph; borrow Spain's acronym signatures and stacked slogans to give a Budapest-style hero an organisation behind it.