Style combination · Contrasts
Estridentismo Graphics × Mexican Popular Graphics
Same Mexico City walls a generation apart: Posada's broadsheets of skeletons, crimes and saints against Maples Arce's broadside of radio, speed and skyscrapers; set one beside the other to stage folk memory against the machine future.
Mix them and make something Estridentismo Graphics Mexican Popular Graphics
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.
Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)
- Type from Estridentismo Graphics
- Colour from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Form from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Composition from Estridentismo Graphics
- Surface from Estridentismo Graphics
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Estridentismo Graphics
Rise
Anton, standing in for Heavy condensed block capitals (Irradiador masthead and cover texts between thick black rules, with giant block-built issue numerals, 1923)
Text · Mexican Popular Graphics
Cheap broadsheets, chapbooks and gazettes sold on the streets of Porfirian Mexico City by the publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and illustrated by Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada. A bold relief picture of crime, disaster, miracle or satire sits under shouting display type and columns of corridos, printed in black on brightly coloured cheap paper, while the calavera skeleton lampoons every class.
Bodoni Moda; Mexican Popular Graphics used Nineteenth-century display types and Modern (Didone) roman for corridos and verse
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Mexican Popular Graphics, with a counter-accent from Estridentismo Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)
-
#efe6cfground · 36% -
#151515ink · 14% -
#d6337faccent · 18% -
#e0552baccent · 14% -
#5aa05aaccent · 10% -
#be2d33accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe6cf;
--ink: #151515;
--accent-1: #d6337f;
--accent-2: #e0552b;
--accent-3: #5aa05a;
--accent-4: #be2d33;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Estridentismo Graphics
- Art Deco Pairs well · Both drew the 1920s skyline; pair Deco's setback towers and block display letters with Stridentist black-and-white relief for a skyscraper poster with a rougher, revolutionary edge.
- Russian Constructivism Pairs well · Two post-revolutionary avant-gardes: borrow Constructivism's thick bars and heavy grotesque to steady a Stridentist cover, but keep the hand-cut woodcut instead of photomontage.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Pairs well · Leopoldo Méndez carried the Stridentist woodcut into the Taller de Gráfica Popular in 1937; give a TGP print a radio mast or a skyline on a steep diagonal and one bright ink to bring back the machine-age optimism.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Both cut wood by hand, for opposite ends: Arts and Crafts used the block to flee the machine, Stridentism used it to celebrate radio masts and factories.
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22) Pairs well · Two Latin American avant-gardes launched within two months of each other (Actual No. 1 in December 1921, the Semana in February 1922). Pair Klaxon's shared-letter letterpress cover with a Stridentist woodcut skyline for a 1920s magazine that is both witty and machine-mad.
With Mexican Popular Graphics
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Both are cheap, fast and irreverent; reuse stock cuts and coloured paper in zines for the same street-sheet energy.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Isolate one calavera on an empty field to show how much of the style's force comes from crowding.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Pairs well · The TGP took Posada as its ancestor; combine his calavera satire with linocut political posters for socially engaged print.
- Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Pairs well · Brazil's cordel covers are a parallel relief-picture-on-cheap-paper tradition; pair Posada-style broadsides with cordel woodcuts for street ephemera that tells a story in one picture.
- Lubok Popular Print Pairs well · Posada's broadsheets and lubki share cheap paper, crude relief cuts and street humour; brush lubok-style washes over a black relief broadsheet.
- Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Pairs well · Posada's hojas volantes are another pedlar broadsheet with a crude relief picture over a block of text; add Épinal's stencil colour to a black relief broadsheet for a hand-coloured street print.
- Lira Popular (Chilean Illustrated Verse Broadsheets) Pairs well · A sibling street broadside; borrow Posada's coloured paper and single big cut, or keep the Chilean frieze of cuts over many ruled verse columns.
- Onitsha Market Pamphlets Pairs well · Both are penny print for newly literate readers; share the sensational headline and moral tone, but let Onitsha supply photographs where Posada cut relief blocks.