Style combination · Contrasts
Fluxus Graphics × Situationist Détournement Graphics
Contemporaries who both took found pictures, but Maciunas packed them into a tight, deadpan black grid of mixed dry-transfer type, while Debord and Jorn scattered fragments under painted ink and aimed the joke at revolution; choose order or drift.
Mix them and make something Fluxus Graphics Situationist Détournement 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.
Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Situationist Détournement Graphics
- Type from Fluxus Graphics
- Colour from Fluxus Graphics
- Form from Fluxus Graphics
- Composition from Situationist Détournement Graphics
- Surface from Situationist Détournement Graphics
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Fluxus Graphics avoids painterly brushwork: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Fluxus Graphics
Hello
Anton, standing in for IBM Executive condensed sans typewriter (nearly all running text for about eight years, published straight from the machine and enlarged by photostat; the machine's owners, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, say Maciunas had some letters custom-replaced with broader ones; after 1968 a newer IBM with changeable faces added bold and italic, still sans serif)
Text · Situationist Détournement Graphics
Graphics of the Letterist and Situationist Internationals (1956–1972), built on détournement: taking existing words and pictures (comic strips, advertisements, news photographs, city maps, classic texts) and turning them against their source. Debord and Jorn scattered cut press fragments among splashes of coloured ink in the artist's books Fin de Copenhague and Mémoires, and cut the map of Paris into islands linked by red arrows. Strasbourg students and the CMDO refilled comic-strip balloons with theory and pasted the strips up.
Courier Prime; Situationist Détournement Graphics used Caractères Simples, a nineteenth-century French sans serif shown by Deberny, set in lowercase for the title on every issue of Internationale situationniste and Found press type
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Fluxus Graphics, with a counter-accent from Situationist Détournement Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Situationist Détournement Graphics
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#f2efe7ground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#cbd04faccent · 18% -
#e08a2caccent · 14% -
#b3905faccent · 10% -
#c62f2aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2efe7;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #cbd04f;
--accent-2: #e08a2c;
--accent-3: #b3905f;
--accent-4: #c62f2a;
--font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Courier Prime", monospace;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Fluxus Graphics
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Both mix found type with appropriated pictures, but punk tears and photocopies while Fluxus keeps a clean offset black, justified blocks and a tight edge-to-edge grid; use the Fluxus version when cheap materials should still look ordered.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Both rely on a sans and a rectilinear grid, but Swiss design spends white space where Maciunas abolished margins and mixed many faces within one name; set the two side by side to decide whether order should breathe or fill.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · One ink on coloured stock, small runs and editions sent by post: print Fluxus-style cards and box labels on a riso in black on kraft or coloured paper, and let the stock colour change from copy to copy.
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Pairs well · Maciunas took many of his pictures from old engravings in the New York Public Library's Picture Collection; pair a Victorian cut with a plain typewritten label in one sans for the same deadpan collision of old picture and flat text.
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc) Contrasts · Same New York years and the same habit of locking letters together until they touch, but Lubalin kerned polished phototype for advertising while Maciunas pressed leftover dry-transfer letters into puzzle monograms on kraft; choose between the commercial ligature and the scavenged one.
With Situationist Détournement Graphics
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Punk reprised the situationist prank in the late 1970s, but it packs torn photocopies and mixed type into crowded pages; détournement keeps a few recognisable fragments and lets each one say the opposite of what it said. Borrow the rewritten balloon when a punk layout needs a sharper argument.
- Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) Pairs well · The photo-romance was a raw material René Viénet named in Internationale situationniste no. 11 (1967), calling for photo-romances to be détourned by adding or altering their speech bubbles: keep the photographed lovers and the grid of frames untouched and change only the balloons, so that the melodrama speaks against itself.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Mass-market comic panels were a favourite raw material of détournement: keep the drawing of an adventure or western panel untouched and rewrite only the balloons to turn it against its own story.
- Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular Pairs well · Image macros and reaction memes recaption a known picture to say something new, which is détournement by other means; set a situationist rewritten balloon in a meme layout to bring the method online.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Both took comic panels and advertisements in the same years, but Lichtenstein enlarged a single panel to painting size as a close copy of what it already said, while détournement kept the panel at reading size and rewrote its balloon to argue against its source; the SI's English section called Pop art 'the last ditch attempt to shore up the decomposition of the spectacle' (1967). Enlarge when the source itself is the subject, rewrite when the message must turn on the source.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Contrasts · Same Paris spring of 1968, opposite method: the Atelier populaire drew new figures and slogans and screenprinted them flat in one colour, while the situationists reused existing comics, photographs and texts. Draw when the message must read from across the street, détourn when the audience must recognise the source.
- ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics Contrasts · Gran Fury placed its work 'in direct line of descent with Situationist questions' and kept the hijacking of mass media, but it copied whole advertising formats (a Benetton campaign, the front page of The New York Times) in professional offset with staged photographs and one-line slogans, where the situationists scattered cut fragments under ink. Copy the format whole when the work must pass for the real thing in public space; cut it up when the reader should see the seams.
- Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire Pairs well · Take the cut-up method and add the dense tabloid page to turn theory into a prank.