Style combination · Pairs well

Cuban Revolutionary Poster × Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster

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.

From the research on Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster (DIVEDCO & ICP)

Mix them and make something Cuban Revolutionary Poster Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Cuban Revolutionary Poster, their arrangement from Cuban Revolutionary Poster, the finish from Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster. 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) Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster (DIVEDCO & ICP)

Type from Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster: Hand-lettering
Brush & pen calligraphy
Colour from Cuban Revolutionary Poster: 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 Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster: Carved line
Flat

The type

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

Display · Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster

Ours

Yatra One, standing in for Bold sans and slab-like display capitals cut for DIVEDCO film titles ('DOÑA JULIA', 'NENEN DE LA RUTA MORA'), with small sans capitals for the credit line 'Película hecha en Puerto Rico por la División de Educación de la Comunidad'

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 Cuban Revolutionary Poster, with a counter-accent from Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster (DIVEDCO & ICP)

#f2ede0 ground · 36%
#1c1c1c ink · 14%
#f5b81c accent · 18%
#e3342b accent · 14%
#d6337a accent · 10%
#2d8a57 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2ede0;
  --ink: #1c1c1c;
  --accent-1: #f5b81c;
  --accent-2: #e3342b;
  --accent-3: #d6337a;
  --accent-4: #2d8a57;
  --font-display: "Yatra One", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Puerto Rican Silkscreen Poster (DIVEDCO & ICP): The posters drew on living Puerto Rican traditions, among them the vejigante masks of the Afro-Puerto Rican fiestas de Santiago Apóstol in Loíza and the carved santos of household devotion, and many were public-education posters of the Muñoz Marín government; give these motifs their community and devotional context rather than using them as generic 'tropical' decoration, do not pass pastiches off as DIVEDCO or Instituto originals, and credit or commission Puerto Rican printmakers rather than lifting the look. The Instituto was founded in 1955 amid nationalist sentiment to foster a Puerto Rican identity distinct from that of the United States, and its Spanish hand lettering has been read as a passive resistance to US cultural influence, while DIVEDCO was a product of the governing Popular Democratic Party and its films, which these posters announced, often read as propaganda for it; keep the Spanish and the island subjects, and do not re-letter the look in English for US brands or reduce it to generic 'Latin' flavour.