Style combination · Pairs well

French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster × Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

Savignac's and Villemot's one-figure, one-prop sight gags on a flat ground are the model for a strong premise image; borrow the single visual pun to sharpen a cover that has drifted into two figures simply standing side by side.

From the research on Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)

Mix them and make something French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster, their arrangement from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster, the finish from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)

Type from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover: Hand-lettering
Type as image
Colour from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster: Isolated object
Single focal point
Surface from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

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

Display · Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

Wow

Londrina Solid, standing in for Tall, condensed hand-drawn capitals in white, stacked in two to four lines down the cover: medium-weight on Beach Read (2020), People We Meet on Vacation (2021) and Book Lovers (2022), thin and monoline on Twice in a Blue Moon (2019) and It Happened One Summer (2021); the 'big block text' The Pudding found on the style

Text · French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster

The humorous street poster of post-war Paris, which took off in 1949 when Raymond Savignac and Bernard Villemot showed their rejected projects together and Savignac's Monsavon cow, its udder filling a bar of soap, went up on the walls. With Hervé Morvan they reduced each advertisement to one cartoon gag whose punchline is the product: a stylised figure brushed in a few bright colours on a plain ground, the brand name drawn into the picture and almost no other copy, printed as large colour lithographs until agency photography pushed it aside in the 1970s.

Archivo; French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster used Brand name painted by the artist into the picture, often in bold sans capitals on the product itself and Roman capitals over a lowercase italic line, lettered on the product

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover, with a counter-accent from French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)

#024c8b ground · 36%
#ffffff ink · 14%
#fdc104 accent · 18%
#d8291f accent · 14%
#ef3e84 accent · 10%
#f3c63a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #024c8b;
  --ink: #ffffff;
  --accent-1: #fdc104;
  --accent-2: #d8291f;
  --accent-3: #ef3e84;
  --accent-4: #f3c63a;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan): Savignac, Villemot, Morvan and Carlu are in copyright (Adagp, Paris), and some of their images are still brand property: Savignac's Bic boy is part of the BIC logo, and Orangina reissued Villemot's zest parasol on its bottles in 2011. Invent your own gag for your own product rather than redrawing the Monsavon cow, the Maggi ox or the Bic boy, do not prompt an image model for a named affichiste's hand, and never present a generated image as a vintage affiche.

Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover): Draw the characters as the book describes them, in skin tone, body size, age, disability and gender, and do not lighten or slim them for the market: illustration spread partly because stock photography offered too few people of colour, and Helen Hoang chose it to get past readers' bias about her Asian lead. Because a cute cartoon cover does not show how explicit a book is and can be mistaken for young-adult fiction, say clearly on the book and in its retail listing that it is an adult romance. Critics have read the uniform look as sexist, making women's adult reading look like YA (Kelly Jensen, Book Riot, 2019), so draw this book's own premise rather than the template.

The two styles

A stylised woman with short black hair sits with her knees raised, wearing a blue swimsuit and holding a yellow drink with a red-and-white striped straw. Above her, large hand-painted letters read “SOLEILADE,” with the yellow O surrounded by sun rays on a cream background.

1948–1979 · Western Europe French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) The humorous street poster of post-war Paris, which took off in 1949 when Raymond Savignac and Bernard Villemot showed their rejected projects together and Savignac's Monsavon cow, its udder filling a bar of soap, went up on the walls. With Hervé Morvan they reduced each advertisement to one cartoon gag whose punchline is the product: a stylised figure brushed in a few bright colours on a plain ground, the brand name drawn into the picture and almost no other copy, printed as large colour lithographs until agency photography pushed it aside in the 1970s.

A cartoon woman holding colorful books and a man in a navy suit with a yellow tie glance at each other against a turquoise background. Huge white and pink lettering reads “PLOT TWIST,” with yellow accent strokes above and below.

2016–present · North America, Western Europe, Global / networked Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover) The illustrated cover of the contemporary romantic comedy: a couple drawn as flat cartoon figures with simplified faces, from silhouettes and hidden faces to a few cartoon features, caught in one gesture that states the premise, on a single saturated ground of teal, pink, yellow or purple, under a hand-lettered title so large that the figures often lean on it. It recalls the drawn covers of 2000s chick lit. William Morrow's The Hating Game (2016) was an early example and Berkley took it up wholesale in 2018; by 2023, 72% of the romances featured in Publishers Weekly had illustrated covers.

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