Style combination · Pairs well

French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster × Push Pin Style

Borrow Push Pin's invented display lettering and period quotation to give a gag poster an editorial voice, but keep the single joke and the empty ground.

From the research on French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan)

Mix them and make something French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster Push Pin Style

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) Push Pin Style

Type from Push Pin Style: Ornamented display
Hand-lettering
Colour from Push Pin Style: 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 · Push Pin Style

Yay!

Righteous; Push Pin Style used Baby Teeth and Glaser Stencil

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 Push Pin Style, 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) Push Pin Style

#f4e9cf ground · 36%
#1b1b1b ink · 14%
#f2b632 accent · 18%
#d8291f accent · 14%
#2e86ab accent · 10%
#9b4f96 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4e9cf;
  --ink: #1b1b1b;
  --accent-1: #f2b632;
  --accent-2: #d8291f;
  --accent-3: #2e86ab;
  --accent-4: #9b4f96;
  --font-display: "Righteous", sans-serif;
  --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.