Style combination · Contrasts
Corporate Identity Modernism × Cuban Revolutionary Poster
Militant, colourful single-image posters versus neutral corporate systems; use the Cuban mode where a cause needs urgency.
Mix them and make something Corporate Identity Modernism Cuban 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.
Corporate Identity Modernism Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)
- Type from Corporate Identity Modernism
- Colour from Cuban Revolutionary Poster
- Form from Corporate Identity Modernism
- Composition from Corporate Identity Modernism
- Surface from Cuban Revolutionary Poster
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Cuban Revolutionary Poster
The poster culture of revolutionary Cuba, produced for the film institute ICAIC and the solidarity organisation OSPAAAL. With no commercial advertising and scarce materials, designers made bold silkscreen and offset posters that combined Pop and psychedelic colour, op-art pattern, flat silhouettes and single conceptual images, for cinema and for internationalist causes from Vietnam to Africa.
Archivo; Cuban Revolutionary Poster used Hand-cut silkscreen display lettering and Neo-grotesque sans captions repeated in Spanish, English, French and Arabic
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Cuban Revolutionary Poster, with a counter-accent from Corporate Identity Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Corporate Identity Modernism Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)
-
#f2ede0ground · 36% -
#1c1c1cink · 14% -
#f5b81caccent · 18% -
#d7261eaccent · 14% -
#0a4fa0accent · 10% -
#d6337aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2ede0;
--ink: #1c1c1c;
--accent-1: #f5b81c;
--accent-2: #d7261e;
--accent-3: #0a4fa0;
--accent-4: #d6337a;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Corporate Identity Modernism
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Its successor trades abstract authority for rubbery friendliness; compare the two to decide how institutional or human a brand should feel.
- Generative & Dynamic Identities Pairs well · Keep the manual's mark, colour and grid as constants and let generative rules vary one parameter, so the system still reads as one company.
- Flat Design Pairs well · Flat UI inherits these reductive marks; reuse their clear-space and colour-code discipline when scaling icons across screens.
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Punk's ransom-note lettering is the anti-manual; one torn, xeroxed element against a corporate grid reads instantly as critique.
- Plakatstil / Sachplakat Pairs well · Its brand-name-plus-object formula prefigures logo-led identity; pair it with a modernist grid for confident product campaigns.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Contrasts · Exact Pantone-matched corporate colour is the opposite of riso's drifting inks; use the contrast to signal independence.
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Pairs well · Roll a matched Arabic–Latin family through a standards manual so both scripts carry the identity with equal authority.
- Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri) Contrasts · American corporate identity policed one mark through a manual, while Milan let artists vary the language; compare the two when deciding how strict a brand system should be.
With Cuban Revolutionary Poster
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · Cuba largely avoided Soviet painted realism; set a flat silhouette against a heroic painting to show abstraction carrying politics.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · Pair Pop's flat, brand-like imagery with Cuban single-idea silhouettes for bold campaign posters.
- Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics) Contrasts · OSPAAAL and ICAIC posters were planned, many-coloured and made to last, while the 68 brigades printed one ink for the next march; choose Cuba for a solidarity campaign, 68 for an emergency.
- Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics Contrasts · ICAIC's film posters also read a film through one silhouette or pun, but in saturated, clashing screenprint colour for a revolutionary public; Bass keeps to one or two flat colours and black, and the symbol's real home is the moving title.
- Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters) Pairs well · Both are state poster programmes that took up pop and op colour; give an OSPAAAL-style single emblem Ruiz Durand's comic contour and enlarged dot ground for a campaign that must read from across a village square.
- Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster (DIVEDCO & ICP) Pairs well · Both are state-backed Caribbean silkscreen cultures for cinema and the arts, and Puerto Rico's began more than a decade before ICAIC's workshop; combine ICAIC's single conceptual image with Homar's hand-drawn Spanish lettering built into it.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Contrasts · Same decade, opposite means: ICAIC's silkscreened film posters and OSPAAAL's mostly offset solidarity posters were polished, many-coloured and made to last, while the Atelier's one anonymous ink was pulled overnight for the next morning's wall; decide which of the two the brief needs.
- Spanish Civil War Poster Contrasts · Cuba kept the raised fist but traded urgent painted bodies for one witty silhouette; use the pair to choose between urgency and wit.