Stylogeny combining Estado Novo Folk Modernism × Greek Tourism Modernism

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Style combination · Contrasts

Estado Novo Folk Modernism × Greek Tourism Modernism

Both are southern European state images aimed partly at foreign visitors, but the SPN staged a static rural, Catholic idyll in lithographed figures, while EOT turned antiquity and the islands into cut-out signs on colour; compare them to choose between folk narrative and modernist emblem.

From the research on Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)

Mix them and make something Estado Novo Folk Modernism Greek Tourism Modernism

STILLEstado Novo × Greek Tourism1933 · 1960
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Estado Novo Folk Modernism, their arrangement from Greek Tourism Modernism, the finish from Estado Novo Folk Modernism. 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.

Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN) Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)

Type from Estado Novo Folk Modernism
Colour from Greek Tourism Modernism
Form from Estado Novo Folk Modernism
Composition from Greek Tourism Modernism
Surface from Estado Novo Folk Modernism

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The type

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

Display · Estado Novo Folk Modernism

Still

Cinzel, standing in for Roman inscriptional capitals with Cross-of-Christ word separators (text panels of the Exposição do Mundo Português, 1940)

Text · Greek Tourism Modernism

The modernist image of Greece made for the National Tourism Organisation (EOT) by Michalis Katzourakis, its art adviser in 1960-1967, and by Frederick Carabott, who advised it until 1967; in 1962 the two also founded the K&K Athens Advertising Centre. A poster sets one Hellenic sign (a photographed relief, vase or statue, a Byzantine dome) on flat saturated colour or, full-bleed, a mosaic or a woven ship, under the country's name, often one lowercase word in bold sans: grèce, greece. After 1967 photography gradually took over, but other designers kept the manner going at EOT under the junta.

Inter; Greek Tourism Modernism used Bold sans-serif in lowercase, geometric or grotesque, for the one-word country name (grèce, greece, griechenland), most often on the EOT posters of 1960-1963, and still on 'athens festival' in 1974 and Widely spaced roman serif capitals

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Greek Tourism Modernism, with a counter-accent from Estado Novo Folk Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN) Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)

  • #141414 ground · 36%
  • #f3efe6 ink · 14%
  • #f2c230 accent · 18%
  • #e8812a accent · 14%
  • #b8322a accent · 10%
  • #1f3f9c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #141414;
  --ink: #f3efe6;
  --accent-1: #f2c230;
  --accent-2: #e8812a;
  --accent-3: #b8322a;
  --accent-4: #1f3f9c;
  --font-display: "Cinzel", serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN): This was the official propaganda of an authoritarian dictatorship, whose idealised peasant served the myth of 'honoured poverty'. The crafts it staged, such as Barcelos clay figures, Viana do Castelo embroidery and regional costume, remain living community traditions. Do not present the regime's version of them as neutral heritage, or its Catholic and heraldic symbols as decoration. Its celebration of the Discoveries served a living colonial empire: the 1940 Exposição do Mundo Português showed 138 men, women and children recruited in the colonies, among reconstructed villages, as a 'human zoo'. Do not reuse its caravels, padrões and imperial slogans as innocent heritage.

Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT): Many of these posters picture Byzantine churches and monasteries, such as Mystras and island chapels, that remain active Orthodox sacred places, and borrow woven and mosaic motifs from living regional crafts: use them with that weight, not as interchangeable 'Greek' decoration. The style is also a state nation-branding image made for foreign visitors, and other designers went on making EOT posters in this manner, beside colour photography, under the 1967-1974 military dictatorship, so do not present its sunlit antiquity as a neutral picture of Greece. Commercial reuse of photographs of Greek monuments and museum antiquities also needs permission from, and a fee to, the Greek state (Law 4858/2021, article 46), so clear any statue, relief or site photograph before using it in new work.

04

The two styles

A vintage-style illustrated poster shows a rural family in embroidered traditional clothing, with a man holding a wooden staff, a woman carrying a child, and a girl holding wheat. A Portuguese coat of arms, fruiting branches, wheat, a decorated red jug, grapevines, and white village buildings surround them above the words “TERRA NOSSA.” 1933–1949 · Southern Europe Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN) The official image of Salazar's Estado Novo, shaped by António Ferro's Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN, 1933; SNI from 1944). Modernists such as Almada Negreiros, Fred Kradolfer, Bernardo Marques and Tom gave rural families, regional costume, folk crafts and national emblems a simplified modern form. The regime fixed the subject more than the drawing, from Kradolfer's synthesis to Martins Barata's detailed school charts. Lithographed posters preached 'Deus, Pátria, Família' to a largely illiterate public; pavilions, photobooks and Panorama addressed literate and foreign audiences. 1960–1974 · Southern Europe Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT) The modernist image of Greece made for the National Tourism Organisation (EOT) by Michalis Katzourakis, its art adviser in 1960-1967, and by Frederick Carabott, who advised it until 1967; in 1962 the two also founded the K&K Athens Advertising Centre. A poster sets one Hellenic sign (a photographed relief, vase or statue, a Byzantine dome) on flat saturated colour or, full-bleed, a mosaic or a woven ship, under the country's name, often one lowercase word in bold sans: grèce, greece. After 1967 photography gradually took over, but other designers kept the manner going at EOT under the junta.

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More combinations

With Estado Novo Folk Modernism

With Greek Tourism Modernism

Every style combination