Stylogeny combining Fotoromanzo × Giallo Mondadori Covers

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Style combination · Contrasts

Fotoromanzo × Giallo Mondadori Covers

Both sold weekly at Italian kiosks, but the photo-romance told melodrama in staged photographs and ruled grids, the giallo in one painted window; set them side by side to contrast photographic and painted suspense.

From the research on Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)

Mix them and make something Fotoromanzo Giallo Mondadori Covers

OURSFotoromanzo × Giallo Mondadori1947 · 1929
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Giallo Mondadori Covers, their arrangement from Fotoromanzo, the finish from Fotoromanzo. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)

Type from Giallo Mondadori Covers
Colour from Fotoromanzo

Giallo Mondadori Covers avoids monochrome: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

Form from Giallo Mondadori Covers
Composition from Fotoromanzo

Giallo Mondadori Covers avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

Surface from Fotoromanzo

02

The type

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

Display · Giallo Mondadori Covers

Ours

Anton, standing in for Condensed display capitals for title and author on the postwar weekly, under a masthead of spaced sans capitals over a rule (I GIALLI MONDADORI / IL DELITTO MI HA VINTO / di FRANCO ENNA, no. 385, 1956), then heavy condensed title capitals across the full width beside a red corner block lettered IL GIALLO MONDADORI in white sans capitals (COLPO A FREDDO, no. 600, 1960)

Text · Fotoromanzo

The photo-romance of the Italian women's weeklies: a melodrama told in staged photographs, first printed by Il mio sogno and Bolero Film in May 1947 and copied from France to Brazil. Actors pose on modest sets or in familiar places, and the stills sit in a plain grid of ruled frames, often two or three to a row. Dialogue in balloons and boxes, lettered by hand or typeset, is pasted over the pictures, and close-ups of faces carry the drama. The weeklies printed the stories in black and white until colour took over in the mid-1970s; covers sold each issue with a photograph of the stars.

Comic Neue; Fotoromanzo used Hand-lettered capitals for narration and balloons and Typeset sans in later work

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Fotoromanzo, with a counter-accent from Giallo Mondadori Covers. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)

  • #f3f0e8 ground · 36%
  • #151515 ink · 14%
  • #c62a2f accent · 18%
  • #2b5ba6 accent · 14%
  • #d9906f accent · 10%
  • #8c8c8c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3f0e8;
  --ink: #151515;
  --accent-1: #c62a2f;
  --accent-2: #2b5ba6;
  --accent-3: #d9906f;
  --accent-4: #8c8c8c;
  --font-display: "Anton", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Comic Neue", cursive;
}

Use it with care

Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance): Photo-romances starred real actors, some later famous (Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren), and their photographs belong to publishers' archives such as the Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori: cast your own models, never ask an image model for a real star's likeness, and never present a generated still as a vintage photo-romance.

Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli): Il Giallo Mondadori, its masthead and the Mondadori emblem belong to Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, which still publishes the series, and the cover paintings by Carlo Jacono and others remain in copyright: paint your own scene and letter your own title, do not combine a yellow ground, a red-rimmed circle and a Mondadori-style masthead so that a design passes for an issue of the series, and never present a generated cover as a vintage giallo. Do not default to the pin-up and sexualised-victim clichés some covers use (the woman in lingerie on no. 385, 1956) when borrowing the look.

04

The two styles

A vintage-style poster titled “SOLO TU” combines a large black-and-white portrait of a pensive woman with six smaller photographic panels of her and a young man. The panels show longing glances, an embrace, and the couple walking beside a river with a bridge and domed buildings behind them. 1947–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America & Caribbean Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) The photo-romance of the Italian women's weeklies: a melodrama told in staged photographs, first printed by Il mio sogno and Bolero Film in May 1947 and copied from France to Brazil. Actors pose on modest sets or in familiar places, and the stills sit in a plain grid of ruled frames, often two or three to a row. Dialogue in balloons and boxes, lettered by hand or typeset, is pasted over the pictures, and close-ups of faces carry the drama. The weeklies printed the stories in black and white until colour took over in the mid-1970s; covers sold each issue with a photograph of the stars. A painted thriller-style poster shows a dark-haired woman peering anxiously around a wooden door while a man in a dark coat stands at the top of a shadowy staircase, facing a lit doorway. The scene sits within a red-bordered circle on a bright yellow background beneath the large red title “LA PORTA CHIUSA.” 1929–present · Southern Europe Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli) The cover system of Mondadori's crime series, Milan, from I Libri Gialli of 1929 to Il Giallo Mondadori today. Every cover is the same bright yellow, which gave Italian its word giallo for crime fiction, with one red-rimmed window on a painted moment of the crime: a hexagon on the first four books, then a circle the figures often step out of. Heavy sans capitals stack the title above and the author below; later the masthead moved to a corner block (late 1950s), then to a band over a red stripe (late 1960s). Carlo Jacono, 'the man of the circle', painted the scenes in tempera, 1950-86.

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