Style combination · Contrasts
Cuban Tobacco Lithography × Plain Tobacco Packaging
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.
Mix them and make something Cuban Tobacco Lithography Plain Tobacco Packaging
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 Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas) Plain Tobacco Packaging
- Type from Cuban Tobacco Lithography
-
Plain Tobacco Packaging avoids ornamented display: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Colour from Plain Tobacco Packaging
- Form from Cuban Tobacco Lithography
-
Plain Tobacco Packaging avoids abundant decoration: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Plain Tobacco Packaging
- 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
Atlas
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 · Plain Tobacco Packaging
A packaging language written into law to strip tobacco of persuasion. Since Australia's Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 (all retail packs from 1 December 2012), logos, brand colours, imagery and embossing are banned: every pack is a rigid, matt rectangle in Pantone 448C 'drab dark brown', chosen in consumer testing as the least appealing colour. Clinical photographs of disease under bold Helvetica capitals fill most of the front and back, and the brand survives as one small centred line of grey sans-serif, with the variant name on a smaller line below. More than twenty countries followed.
Inter; Plain Tobacco Packaging used Lucida Sans (Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes) and Helvetica (Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann, 1957)
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Plain Tobacco Packaging, with a counter-accent from Cuban Tobacco Lithography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas) Plain Tobacco Packaging
-
#111111ground · 36% -
#ffffffink · 14% -
#ffd100accent · 18% -
#b51f2eaccent · 14% -
#c9a23faccent · 10% -
#4a412aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #111111;
--ink: #ffffff;
--accent-1: #ffd100;
--accent-2: #b51f2e;
--accent-3: #c9a23f;
--accent-4: #4a412a;
--font-display: "Elsie", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Inter", 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.
Plain Tobacco Packaging: Graphic health warnings show real disease and are official public-health instruments; WHO's warning database lists the Australian Government as the owner of its warning images, which it may license to other countries free of charge. Use the shock imagery only for genuine health communication, never as decoration or as a parody that could mislead about a product's risks, and check the terms before reproducing a country's actual warning photographs or mandated layouts. Respect the dignity of the people pictured, never generate imagery that could pass for an official warning, and do not turn the drab-pack look into anti-brand styling for tobacco, vaping or nicotine products, which would make a tool against persuasion persuasive again.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
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.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · 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.
- 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.
With Plain Tobacco Packaging
- GOV.UK Design (GDS Style) Pairs well · Another state system of fixed constants where each colour has one job; borrow its plain wording and one-message-per-surface discipline for the leaflets and screens that sit around a health warning.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · Ulm's coded colours, single type family and manual built recognition for Braun and Lufthansa; plain packaging uses the same rule-bound specification to erase it, a reminder that a design system can suppress identity as well as build it.
- ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics Pairs well · Gran Fury's white capitals on black are the activist cousin of the mandated warning statement; borrow their wit when a health message must persuade without leaning on clinical shock photographs.
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism Contrasts · Both reduce a pack to one colour and a small sans-serif name, but blanding picks a pleasing pastel to seduce and plain packaging picks the least appealing shade to repel; choose the colour first, because it decides which way the reduction works.
- Nutri-Score (Front-of-Pack Colour-Grade Label) Contrasts · Plain packaging strips the brand and hands the face to the state; Nutri-Score leaves the brand intact and adds a small standardised inset in the lower third. Decide whether the public message should replace the design or sit inside it.
- Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals) Contrasts · Plain packaging erases the brand and hands the face to a shock photograph; the octagons leave the brand intact and add a small, uniform black sign. Choose between them by deciding whether the warning should replace the design or interrupt it.
- Analog Horror Graphics Contrasts · Both frighten with the flat, mandatory voice of an official warning: plain packaging does it for real, in print, with matt drab brown, clinical photographs and Helvetica capitals; analog horror fakes it on a screen and lets the signal decay. Borrow plain packaging's uncompromising flatness for a fictional warning screen, and save the noise for the moment the threat appears.
- Muji No-Brand Design (Mujirushi Ryohin) Contrasts · Both strip branding, but one is a regulatory sanction in drab brown and the other a voluntary, serene choice.