Style combination · Pairs well
Fotoromanzo × Situationist Détournement Graphics
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.
Mix them and make something Fotoromanzo Situationist Détournement Graphics
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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.
Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) Situationist Détournement Graphics
- Type from Situationist Détournement Graphics
- Colour from Fotoromanzo
- Form from Fotoromanzo
- Composition from Fotoromanzo
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Situationist Détournement Graphics avoids modular grid: this is where the two pull against each other.
- Surface from Situationist Détournement Graphics
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The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Situationist Détournement Graphics
Rose
Archivo Black; 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
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
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The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Fotoromanzo, with a counter-accent from Situationist Détournement Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) Situationist Détournement Graphics
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#f3f0e8ground · 36% -
#151515ink · 14% -
#c62a2faccent · 18% -
#e08a2caccent · 14% -
#2b5ba6accent · 10% -
#e3a888accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f3f0e8;
--ink: #151515;
--accent-1: #c62a2f;
--accent-2: #e08a2c;
--accent-3: #2b5ba6;
--accent-4: #e3a888;
--font-display: "Archivo Black", 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.
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The two styles
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More combinations
With Fotoromanzo
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Contrasts · Both read as ruled panels with speech balloons; choose the fotoromanzo when the cast should be real people posed in black-and-white photographs and the text may run long, and the comic book when drawn heroes, sound effects and flat colour tints should carry the action.
- Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism Contrasts · Drum's photographs report real township life under condensed headlines; the fotoromanzo stages fiction for the camera and runs it as a grid of stills with balloons.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · Blow up a single photo-romance frame with its balloon to poster size for a Pop-style quotation of mass romance, as Lichtenstein did with drawn romance comics. Rewriting the balloons is a different precedent: Hara-Kiri's parodies and the Situationists' détournements of Nous Deux, not Pop.
- Onitsha Market Pamphlets Contrasts · Both are cheap popular romance print from 1947; the Onitsha pamphlets tell their stories in letterpress text with a recycled photograph only on the cover, while the fotoromanzo tells the whole story in staged photographs with balloons.
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · Set the photo-story on an exact modular grid with a neutral grotesque in the dialogue boxes, so the melodrama sits in a clean editorial frame.
- Lianhuanhua Picture-Story Books Contrasts · Both are cheap picture stories read by millions in monochrome; lianhuanhua draws one framed picture per pocket-sized page with a caption beneath, while the fotoromanzo photographs actors and sets several frames to a magazine page with balloons.
- Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover) Contrasts · The postwar photo-romance sold love stories with photographed couples in close-up; the illustrated cover gives up the photograph so that readers can picture themselves in the role and the cover tells nothing of the heat level.
- Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli) Contrasts · 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.
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.
- 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.
- Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas) Contrasts · 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.
- Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire Pairs well · Take the cut-up method and add the dense tabloid page to turn theory into a prank.