Style combination · Pairs well
Literatura de Cordel Woodcut × Lubok Popular Print
Brazilian cordel is another chapbook woodcut tradition; set rhymed verse and a single crude block together, as both do, for narrative print with a vernacular voice.
Mix them and make something Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Lubok Popular Print
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.
Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Lubok Popular Print
- Type from Lubok Popular Print
- Colour from Literatura de Cordel Woodcut
- Form from Literatura de Cordel Woodcut
- Composition from Lubok Popular Print
- Surface from Literatura de Cordel Woodcut
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Lubok Popular Print
Ours
Londrina Solid; Lubok Popular Print used Hand-cut Cyrillic lettering in the block, from Church Slavonic-style semi-uncial (poluustav) to civil script and Rubber-stamped and stencilled lettering imitating lubok woodcut letters in Russian Futurist books
Text · Literatura de Cordel Woodcut
The cover art of Brazil's literatura de cordel, pocket chapbooks of verse whose single picture is a small woodcut cut in soft umburana wood and printed in black above a plain letterpress title. Woodcuts displaced worn zinc clichés of film-star photographs from the 1940s, led by José Bernardo da Silva's Tipografia São Francisco in Juazeiro do Norte. From the 1960s collectors and galleries turned the blocks into standalone prints by masters such as J. Borges.
Libre Caslon Text; Literatura de Cordel Woodcut used Jobbing letterpress types from the print shop's case, for titles and verse and Lettering carved into the woodblock
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Literatura de Cordel Woodcut, with a counter-accent from Lubok Popular Print. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Lubok Popular Print
-
#ece4cfground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#e8c95aaccent · 18% -
#e8b923accent · 14% -
#b33a2eaccent · 10% -
#d98a9eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ece4cf;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #e8c95a;
--accent-2: #e8b923;
--accent-3: #b33a2e;
--accent-4: #d98a9e;
--font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
--font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Literatura de Cordel Woodcut
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Print a cordel-style woodcut on a riso in one ink on tinted stock to keep the pocket-chapbook economy for zines and poetry pamphlets.
- Brazilian Concrete Design Contrasts · Brazil's concrete designers worked in the same decades with grids and sans-serifs; set a cordel woodcut against concrete typography for a sharp sertão-versus-São Paulo tension.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Pairs well · The TGP cut relief prints for protest, cordel for storytelling; combine their black-line language when a narrative needs political edge.
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Pairs well · Both put a single relief picture on cheap street print; borrow Posada's calavera satire but keep cordel's quiet, single-title cover.
- Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards Contrasts · Both cut stiff figures in wood with no perspective or modelling, but the cordel cover is printed in black only, with solid blacks and gouged white lines, above a plain letterpress title, while the tarot card colours an outline key through stencils and cuts its numeral and title into the same block; choose cordel for a stark one-colour cover, tarot for a coloured emblem in a numbered set.
- Lira Popular (Chilean Illustrated Verse Broadsheets) Pairs well · Brazil's cordel puts one woodcut on a folded booklet cover; combine it with the Chilean single sheet for a series of verse prints that share one set of cuts.
- Tropicália Graphic Design Pairs well · The cangaceiro hero of the north-eastern chapbook stands behind Duarte's Corisco; a cordel woodcut figure in a Tropicalist field of saturated colour keeps the popular and the Pop in one frame.
- Onitsha Market Pamphlets Pairs well · A sister market-pamphlet tradition from north-east Brazil; combine cordel's woodcut covers with Onitsha's found photographs for a cheap-print series identity.
With Lubok Popular Print
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Pairs well · Posada's broadsheets and lubki share cheap paper, crude relief cuts and street humour; brush lubok-style washes over a black relief broadsheet.
- ROSTA Windows Pairs well · ROSTA windows inherited the lubok's numbered, captioned panels and rhymed text; combine the two for sequential agitational posters with a folk voice.
- Nianhua & Chinese Folk Print Pairs well · Both are hand-coloured market woodcuts; take nianhua's symmetrical auspicious emblems and lubok's crowded captions and satire for festive print that also tells a story.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Lubok's crowding is its voice; isolate one figure on white to test how much of the meaning lives in the jostling text.
- Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Contrasts · Both are pedlars' broadsheets coloured by hand, but the lubok crams verse into the gaps around its figures and brushes washes on freely, while the Épinal sheet keeps its text beneath a ruled frame and stencils colour across rows of repeated figures; choose the lubok for jostling satire and Épinal for an orderly catalogue or story.
- Narbut School (Ukrainian Baroque Revival Graphics) Contrasts · Popular, coloured woodcut exuberance against Narbut's academic, restrained black line.
- Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Pairs well · Both are cheap popular prints that mix piety with satire and splash colour on by hand; combine them for a folk-print exhibition or publishing identity.
- Đông Hồ & Hàng Trống Folk Prints Pairs well · Lubok's Mice Burying the Cat and Đông Hồ's Rats' Wedding tell the same joke about power; pair them for a folk-satire series or exhibition identity.