Stylogeny combining Finnish Symbol Poster × Polish Poster School

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Style combination · Contrasts

Finnish Symbol Poster × Polish Poster School

Another wit-driven postwar poster school, but painterly, hand-lettered and distorted against the Finnish flat, near-wordless symbol.

From the research on Finnish Symbol Poster (the 'Finnish School', 1954–1995)

Mix them and make something Finnish Symbol Poster Polish Poster School

Yay!Finnish Symbol Poster × Polish Poster School
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Finnish Symbol Poster, their arrangement from Finnish Symbol Poster, the finish from Polish Poster School. 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.

Finnish Symbol Poster (the 'Finnish School', 1954–1995) Polish Poster School

Type from Polish Poster School
Colour from Finnish Symbol Poster
Form from Finnish Symbol Poster
Composition from Finnish Symbol Poster
Surface from Polish Poster School

02

The type

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

Display · Polish Poster School

Yay!

Londrina Solid; Polish Poster School used Henryk Tomaszewski's casual handwritten capitals and Brush- and crayon-drawn title lettering

Text · Finnish Symbol Poster

Finnish poster and symbol design, 1950s to 1990s, in which one reduced picture, often an animal, an object or a visual pun, carries the whole message on an empty ground. Varis aimed for posters with no text; his were called sign-like and visually reduced. Dry humour (Bruun's tongue-in-cheek Finnair salmon, 1958) sits beside a love of Finnish nature. Unlike its parent it also campaigns: the social posters of the 1960s–70s, Varis's Your Lifemeter (1970), Piippo's Ruanda (1994). The same makers drew national logos; Mykkänen's book covers are a typographic side strand.

Inter; Finnish Symbol Poster used No type at all and Slab-serif capitals in Bruun's The Salmon Flight (1958)

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Finnish Symbol Poster, with a counter-accent from Polish Poster School. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Finnish Symbol Poster (the 'Finnish School', 1954–1995) Polish Poster School

  • #f3efe6 ground · 36%
  • #151515 ink · 14%
  • #ee8a1d accent · 18%
  • #d4352b accent · 14%
  • #1f4f9a accent · 10%
  • #7b4b2a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe6;
  --ink: #151515;
  --accent-1: #ee8a1d;
  --accent-2: #d4352b;
  --accent-3: #1f4f9a;
  --accent-4: #7b4b2a;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

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The two styles

A large red silhouette of a moose facing right fills most of a cream background, with broad branching antlers and a small cream eye. The word “NORTH” appears in large blue capital letters at the upper left. 1954–1995 · Northern Europe Finnish Symbol Poster (the 'Finnish School', 1954–1995) Finnish poster and symbol design, 1950s to 1990s, in which one reduced picture, often an animal, an object or a visual pun, carries the whole message on an empty ground. Varis aimed for posters with no text; his were called sign-like and visually reduced. Dry humour (Bruun's tongue-in-cheek Finnair salmon, 1958) sits beside a love of Finnish nature. Unlike its parent it also campaigns: the social posters of the 1960s–70s, Varis's Your Lifemeter (1970), Piippo's Ruanda (1994). The same makers drew national logos; Mykkänen's book covers are a typographic side strand. A large, elongated dark face has an open-topped head containing a hilltop town with blue, cream and ochre buildings, slender trees and a pale sun against a red sky. Rough brush lettering reading “Inner City” fills the cream space at the lower left. 1950–1990 · Eastern Europe Polish Poster School A painterly, metaphorical poster culture that flourished in communist Poland, chiefly for film, theatre, opera and circus. Working for state publishers, free of commercial pressure but under censorship, designers such as Henryk Tomaszewski, Jan Lenica and Roman Cieślewicz replaced star photographs with a single witty or unsettling visual idea, painted or collaged by hand and lettered in the artist's own handwriting.

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With Finnish Symbol Poster

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