Stylogeny combining Total Design × Zagreb Modernist Graphics

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Style combination · Contrasts

Total Design × Zagreb Modernist Graphics

Both make an institution recognisable by its letters and grids, but Total Design applies one impersonal programme across clients, while on Picelj's gallery posters the unit changes with every artist shown and Arsovski breaks the order with collage, pop photographs and rebuses.

From the research on Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)

Mix them and make something Total Design Zagreb Modernist Graphics

Large, heavy black lowercase lettering reading “open form” occupies the top of a cream poster. A grid of red, blue, yellow and black circles, semicircles and quarter-circle shapes fills the remaining space.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Total Design, the form from Zagreb Modernist Graphics, the composition from Zagreb Modernist Graphics. Not a real or historical work.

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.

Total Design & Dutch Functionalism Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)

Type from Total Design
Colour from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
Form from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
Composition from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
Surface from Total Design

02

The type

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

Display · Total Design

Index

Inter Tight, standing in for Helvetica

Text · Zagreb Modernist Graphics

Zagreb graphic design grown from the EXAT 51 manifesto (1951), which tied abstract art to visual communication. Ivan Picelj's screenprinted posters for the Gallery of Contemporary Art and its New Tendencies shows (1961–1973) multiply one geometric unit or a few letters across the sheet, and Mihajlo Arsovski made letters, collage and quotation the identity of Teatar &TD. Later, Boris Ljubičić's Mediterranean Games circles (1979) kept to signs, while Boris Bućan's huge 1980s screenprints for Split's theatre borrowed Egyptian, Secession and Expressionist idioms around his own patterned figures.

Inter; Zagreb Modernist Graphics used Lowercase neo-grotesque sans for titles and credits on Picelj's New Tendencies posters and Akzidenz-Grotesk, Egyptienne Bold Condensed and Red Roses mixed on Arsovski's 1966 western posters for Kinematografi Zagreb

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Zagreb Modernist Graphics, with a counter-accent from Total Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Total Design & Dutch Functionalism Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)

  • #f1ede4 ground · 36%
  • #131313 ink · 14%
  • #f0c419 accent · 18%
  • #e4352a accent · 14%
  • #1e50a2 accent · 10%
  • #4a2c86 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1ede4;
  --ink: #131313;
  --accent-1: #f0c419;
  --accent-2: #e4352a;
  --accent-3: #1e50a2;
  --accent-4: #4a2c86;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD): Picelj (died 2011), Arsovski (died 2020) and Bućan (died 2023) are recent and their posters remain in copyright, Arsovski's Teatar &TD logo is still in use, and Boris Ljubičić's 1979 circle symbol is the permanent emblem of the International Committee of the Mediterranean Games, so borrow the method (a multiplied unit, a lowercase credit line, a rebus title) rather than reproducing a particular poster or mark. Do not dress the style in red stars or party slogans as period decor: these designers worked for galleries and theatres in socialist Yugoslavia and deliberately avoided propaganda imagery.

04

The two styles

Oversized lowercase lettering reads “urban rhy thm” in black, red and blue on an off-white background with fine grey grid lines. Rectangles, repeated bars and large blue and black circular segments fill the remaining space. 1963–1990 · Western Europe Total Design & Dutch Functionalism The Dutch strand of systematic modernism took shape when Wim Crouwel, Benno Wissing, Friso Kramer and Paul and Dick Schwarz founded Total Design in Amsterdam in 1963 as the country's first multidisciplinary studio. It pushed Swiss grid logic towards the mechanical: visible grids, alphabets constructed on the same module as the page, and one cool, programmatic order applied to museums, airports and corporations alike. A geometric poster features a tightly packed grid of circles split into red-orange, blue, black and cream halves, with occasional square corner fields. Large black lowercase lettering reading “krug” interrupts the pattern near the upper left. 1951–1975 · Southern Europe, Central Europe Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD) Zagreb graphic design grown from the EXAT 51 manifesto (1951), which tied abstract art to visual communication. Ivan Picelj's screenprinted posters for the Gallery of Contemporary Art and its New Tendencies shows (1961–1973) multiply one geometric unit or a few letters across the sheet, and Mihajlo Arsovski made letters, collage and quotation the identity of Teatar &TD. Later, Boris Ljubičić's Mediterranean Games circles (1979) kept to signs, while Boris Bućan's huge 1980s screenprints for Split's theatre borrowed Egyptian, Secession and Expressionist idioms around his own patterned figures.

05

More combinations

With Total Design

With Zagreb Modernist Graphics

Every style combination