Stylogeny combining Egyptian Cigarette Packaging × Egyptian Painted Film Poster

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Style combination · Pairs well

Egyptian Cigarette Packaging × Egyptian Painted Film Poster

Pair the tin's French-Arabic heraldic lid with the film poster's painted Arabic titling for a Cairo print identity that spans both.

From the research on Egyptian Cigarette Packaging (Cairo Tobacco Houses)

Mix them and make something Egyptian Cigarette Packaging Egyptian Painted Film Poster

LUXELUXEEgyptian Cigarette × Egyptian Painted
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Egyptian Cigarette Packaging, their arrangement from Egyptian Painted Film Poster, the finish from Egyptian Painted Film Poster. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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.

Egyptian Cigarette Packaging (Cairo Tobacco Houses) Egyptian Painted Film Poster

Type from Egyptian Cigarette Packaging
Colour from Egyptian Painted Film Poster
Form from Egyptian Cigarette Packaging
Composition from Egyptian Painted Film Poster

Egyptian Cigarette Packaging avoids collage & layering: this is where the two pull against each other.

Surface from Egyptian Painted Film Poster

02

The type

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

Display · Egyptian Cigarette Packaging

Luxe

Bungee Shade, standing in for Shaded, outlined and spurred serif capitals for the maker's name ('M. MELACHRINO & Co.')

Text · Egyptian Painted Film Poster

The painted publicity of Egyptian cinema from the early talkies to the 1990s, designed outside the studios by artist-printers such as Hassan Mazhar Gassour and printed as colour lithographs in Cairo. Star portraits copied from stills float as cut-out heads above a melodramatic scene. The Arabic title is painted as a one-off calligraphic logotype whose swelling, interlocked strokes can act out the film's theme.

Archivo; Egyptian Painted Film Poster used Hand-painted Arabic calligraphic title logotypes and Hand-lettered Arabic cast and credit lines

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Egyptian Painted Film Poster, with a counter-accent from Egyptian Cigarette Packaging. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Egyptian Cigarette Packaging (Cairo Tobacco Houses) Egyptian Painted Film Poster

  • #f3ead5 ground · 36%
  • #161616 ink · 14%
  • #f2c230 accent · 18%
  • #c8322a accent · 14%
  • #c9a23f accent · 10%
  • #1f5fa8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3ead5;
  --ink: #161616;
  --accent-1: #f2c230;
  --accent-2: #c8322a;
  --accent-3: #c9a23f;
  --accent-4: #1f5fa8;
  --font-display: "Bungee Shade", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Egyptian Cigarette Packaging (Cairo Tobacco Houses): These boxes sold an Orientalist fantasy of Egypt to Western smokers: the turbaned pipe smoker and the jewelled odalisque are stereotypes, and pharaonic gods and statues were turned into trade marks, so do not reuse them as neutral 'Egyptian' decoration or as a picture of Egyptian life. The crescent and star (an Ottoman and Egyptian state emblem, now widely read as a sign of Islam) and the Arabic inscriptions are state and religious signs, not ornament: do not scatter them or fake Arabic lettering as exotic texture. Tobacco branding is now restricted by advertising bans and plain-packaging laws in many countries, so do not use the style to make real cigarette packs look attractive, and Camel is a live trade mark: draw new marks rather than copying any brand's crest or name.

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The two styles

An ornate cream, red, navy, turquoise and gold cigarette poster reads “NILOTIQUE” above an oval Nile scene with a sailboat, palm trees, pyramids and a low sun. Two stylized falcons flank the scene, surrounded by Egyptian-inspired floral ornaments and patterned borders, with “CIGARETTES” below. 1871–1970 · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Central Europe, North America Egyptian Cigarette Packaging (Cairo Tobacco Houses) The flat tins and slide boxes in which Cairo's tobacco houses, most of them Greek-run, sold hand-made Egyptian cigarettes to the world. A symmetrical lid, framed in Greek-key or interlace bands, carries the maker's name in capitals of mixed faces, crowned monograms, crests and exhibition medals, an Arabic cartouche, small gold crescent-and-star devices, and one or two Orientalist vignettes: cross-legged pipe smokers, pharaonic statues, sphinxes or lotus. The tone is a trading house's guarantee of luxury, and the look was copied by American brands from Rameses II to Camel. A vintage-style painted poster combines large portraits of a dark-haired woman and a mustached man in a white turban with Egyptian ruins, torch-bearing men, and sailboats on a river at sunset. Red Arabic lettering spans the top, while a woman in a flowing red dress crouches beside a carved stone wall below. 1932–1996 · Middle East & North Africa Egyptian Painted Film Poster The painted publicity of Egyptian cinema from the early talkies to the 1990s, designed outside the studios by artist-printers such as Hassan Mazhar Gassour and printed as colour lithographs in Cairo. Star portraits copied from stills float as cut-out heads above a melodramatic scene. The Arabic title is painted as a one-off calligraphic logotype whose swelling, interlocked strokes can act out the film's theme.

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More combinations

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With Egyptian Painted Film Poster

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