Style combination · Contrasts
Cuban Revolutionary Poster × Cuban Tobacco Lithography
A century later in the same city, ICAIC and OSPAAAL posters used flat silhouettes, few inks and one conceptual image; compare them to see what the revolution's graphics stripped away from Havana's commercial ornament.
Mix them and make something Cuban Revolutionary Poster Cuban Tobacco Lithography
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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.
Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)
- Type from Cuban Tobacco Lithography
- Colour from Cuban Revolutionary Poster
- Form from Cuban Tobacco Lithography
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Cuban Revolutionary Poster avoids naturalistic depiction and abundant decoration: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Cuban Revolutionary Poster
- Surface from Cuban Tobacco Lithography
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Cuban Tobacco Lithography
Hello
Elsie; Cuban Tobacco Lithography used Shaded, outlined and inline display capitals drawn by the lithographers and marquistas on the stone; J. R. Bermúdez (La imagen constante, 2000, quoted by Calzadilla) credits their wide repertoire of letters and ornaments with influencing type founders and sign painters and Brand and factory names on banners, ribbons and cartouches
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
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The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Cuban Revolutionary Poster, with a counter-accent from Cuban Tobacco Lithography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)
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#f2ede0ground · 36% -
#1c1c1cink · 14% -
#f5b81caccent · 18% -
#b51f2eaccent · 14% -
#e3342baccent · 10% -
#c9a23faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2ede0;
--ink: #1c1c1c;
--accent-1: #f5b81c;
--accent-2: #b51f2e;
--accent-3: #e3342b;
--accent-4: #c9a23f;
--font-display: "Elsie", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas): Many marquillas trade in racist caricature: series such as 'Vida y muerte de la mulata' sexualise mixed-race women and mock Black Cubans in bozal speech, and some labels show enslaved workers on tobacco estates or bare-breasted 'aboriginal' women as exotic decoration; do not reproduce these figures as period charm. Names and dressings such as H. Upmann, Partagás, Punch and Romeo y Julieta are live Habanos trademarks, so draw new marks rather than copying them, and treat images of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, Cuba's patron saint, as devotional, not decorative.
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The two styles
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More combinations
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.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Militant, colourful single-image posters versus neutral corporate systems; use the Cuban mode where a cause needs urgency.
- 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.
With Cuban Tobacco Lithography
- Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai Pairs well · Shanghai's calendar posters were also given away by tobacco firms; pair their softly modelled women and ornamental borders with the Havana label's medals and arms for a cross-continental tobacco or spirits heritage line.
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Contrasts · The same century's display capitals, borders and medals, but jobbing print leads with type in one or two flat inks while the Havana label leads with a stone-printed picture in many inks, gold and relief; set them side by side to choose between a loud notice and a luxury seal.
- Belle Époque Lithographic Poster Contrasts · Both are colour lithography of the same decades, but the Paris poster puts one figure on a wall at a distance, while the cigar label packs medals, arms and views into a matched set read in the hand; borrow the poster's single figure when a label grows too crowded.
- Hipster Artisanal Revival Contrasts · The craft-boom badge borrows the medal, the banner and the 'Est.' date in one ink on kraft; go back to the Havana label's full colour, bronze gold and embossing when a heritage brand needs real opulence rather than a quotation of it.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · The Cuban historian J. R. Bermúdez (quoted by Calzadilla) credits the label lettering with influencing type founders and sign painters; take the shaded, outlined brand capitals off the label and onto a shop window or bar fascia to carry a tobacco-house identity into the street.
- Egyptian Cigarette Packaging (Cairo Tobacco Houses) Pairs well · Borrow the Havana labels' embossed medals and ribbon banners for a richer lid, but keep the Cairo tin's calm pale ground so it does not tip into clutter.
- Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino) Contrasts · Both are lithographic trades of the Spanish-speaking world that print naturalistic paintings, but the Havana label frames allegories, medals and arms in borders within borders around a brand lettered on the stone, while the cartel vignettes one scene and sets a long programme below it in type.
- Plain Tobacco Packaging Contrasts · The gilded, embossed and bordered cigar label is everything a plain pack is forbidden to be; set the two side by side to show how much of tobacco's appeal was carried by ornament alone.