Style combination · Contrasts
Cuban Revolutionary Poster × Di Tella Graphic Design
Cuba's state screenprints used many bright inks for political messages, the Di Tella one or two flat inks for avant-garde events; together they show two Latin American poster cultures of the 1960s.
Mix them and make something Cuban Revolutionary Poster Di Tella Graphic Design
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.
Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Di Tella Graphic Design (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella)
- Type from Di Tella Graphic Design
- Colour from Di Tella Graphic Design
- Form from Di Tella Graphic Design
- Composition from Cuban Revolutionary Poster
- 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.
Display · Di Tella Graphic Design
Pop
Inter Tight, standing in for Helvetica (with other neo-grotesques for titles and fact blocks; identified on the 1962 sculpture-prize poster by the UNCuyo reader)
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 Di Tella Graphic Design, with a counter-accent from Cuban Revolutionary Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Di Tella Graphic Design (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella)
-
#f3f0e8ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#f5c400accent · 18% -
#b89668accent · 14% -
#e3342baccent · 10% -
#95bca7accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f3f0e8;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #f5c400;
--accent-2: #b89668;
--accent-3: #e3342b;
--accent-4: #95bca7;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
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 Di Tella Graphic Design
- Op Art Graphics Pairs well · The CLAEM programmes and the Premio Di Tella 64 poster already speak Op; run one heavy grotesque title through an optical field, as Distéfano did, for an event that should vibrate.
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Pairs well · Both made the word the picture in the same years; add Lubalin's tight, playful letter-joins to Di Tella's blunt flat-ink title for a headline-led identity.
- Fileteado Porteño Contrasts · Same city, opposite choice: Buenos Aires' ornamental filete against the Di Tella's ornament-free flat-ink modernism; set side by side they show the porteño vernacular and the porteño avant-garde.
- Brazilian Concrete Design Pairs well · The other South American modernism of the 1960s; pair São Paulo's concrete modules with Buenos Aires' event-led giant type for a Southern Cone modernist programme.
- Vicente Rojo & Mexican Editorial Modernism Pairs well · Two Latin American cultural presses of the 1960s working in one or two inks: add the Di Tella's giant title word to Rojo's framed image and ordered text for a cultural programme or catalogue.
- Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters) Pairs well · Both make the event title an optical picture for a small cultural institution under tight means; add the Di Tella's one or two flat inks and blunt grotesque to a Lucerne letter construction for a sterner, more 1960s sheet.