Style combination · Pairs well

Cuban Revolutionary Poster × Pop Achorado

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.

From the research on Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters)

Mix them and make something Cuban Revolutionary Poster Pop Achorado

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Cuban Revolutionary Poster, their arrangement from Cuban Revolutionary Poster, the finish from Pop Achorado. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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) Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters)

Type from Pop Achorado: All caps
Slab serif
Colour from Pop Achorado: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Cuban Revolutionary Poster: Stylised figuration
Restrained accents
Composition from Cuban Revolutionary Poster: Single focal point
Isolated object
Surface from Pop Achorado: Halftone & Ben-Day dots
Hard offset shadow

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Pop Achorado

Act

Alfa Slab One, standing in for Heavy slab and Clarendon-style display capitals, often outlined in black with a drop shadow ('¡Sácale el jugo a tu tierra!', 'El azúcar…', 'Reforma agraria, base de una nueva sociedad')

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

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Pop Achorado, 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) Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters)

#f4f1e8 ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#f6c21c accent · 18%
#ef7d2d accent · 14%
#e3342b accent · 10%
#2f8fd6 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1e8;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #f6c21c;
  --accent-2: #ef7d2d;
  --accent-3: #e3342b;
  --accent-4: #2f8fd6;
  --font-display: "Alfa Slab One", serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters): These are a military government's propaganda, built on Ruiz Durand's photographs of real Andean and northern-coast peasants at the moment they were receiving expropriated land; the reform's outcome is still contested in Peru and the Túpac Amaru II emblem remains a live political symbol. Ruiz Durand is a living artist: credit him and the DPDRA team, and do not reduce the defiant campesino to generic 'Andean' retro decoration or attach it to a cause that drops the land question.