Style combination · Contrasts
Ghanaian Movie Poster × Ghanaian Funeral Poster
They share the walls of Ghanaian towns, but the movie poster is painted by hand on flour sacks with invented, lurid scenes, while the funeral poster is typeset on a computer around a real photograph; set one painted, exaggerated figure against a funeral poster's sober portrait for a deliberate clash of registers.
Mix them and make something Ghanaian Movie Poster Ghanaian Funeral Poster
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.
Ghanaian Movie Poster Ghanaian Funeral Poster & Banner
- Type from Ghanaian Funeral Poster
- Colour from Ghanaian Movie Poster
- Form from Ghanaian Movie Poster
- Composition from Ghanaian Funeral Poster
- Surface from Ghanaian Movie Poster
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Ghanaian Funeral Poster
Together
Archivo Black, standing in for Connected script for first names and titles (a first name or a title with initials) over the surname in heavy sans-serif capitals, often outlined and set in white, red, navy or yellow
Text · Ghanaian Movie Poster
Hand-painted posters commissioned by Ghana's mobile video clubs from about 1985, painted by apprenticed sign painters on stitched flour sacks to advertise VHS screenings of Hollywood, Hong Kong, Nigerian and Indian films. Often without having seen the film, artists invented gory, supernatural and hyper-muscular scenes around looming heads and hand-lettered titles, producing one of the most uninhibited poster vernaculars anywhere.
Archivo; Ghanaian Movie Poster used Hand-painted outlined block capitals and Sign-painter shaded and drop-shadowed letters
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Ghanaian Movie Poster, with a counter-accent from Ghanaian Funeral Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Ghanaian Movie Poster Ghanaian Funeral Poster & Banner
-
#f6c90eground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#1e6fd9accent · 18% -
#c3161caccent · 14% -
#d4a52aaccent · 10% -
#2b9348accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f6c90e;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #1e6fd9;
--accent-2: #c3161c;
--accent-3: #d4a52a;
--accent-4: #2b9348;
--font-display: "Archivo Black", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Ghanaian Funeral Poster & Banner: These posters and banners show real, recently dead people and name their living relatives, and families pay for them as part of a funeral the community judges closely. Funeral posters are usually made for Christians and followers of traditional African religions (Adotey 2018), so do not present them as the funeral custom of all Ghanaians. Do not lift a real poster's photograph, names or lists into new work, and do not use the headlines and colour code as a gag or a generic 'African' texture: 'What a Shock' and a red ground mark a death as sudden or untimely, and relatives often find a banner on their own house painful to live with. The ranked lists of chief mourners can also carry live disputes over kinship and chieftaincy, as when the Tefle Traditional Council formally protested in 2009 against its omission from the poster of a Sokpoe paramount chief. Commission and credit Ghanaian designers and print shops for work in this idiom.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Ghanaian Movie Poster
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Share dream logic and monstrous hybrids; use Surrealist juxtaposition to frame Ghana-style painted figures in an editorial layout.
- Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster Pairs well · Combine Ghana's lurid invented scenes with Bollywood's glossy star portraits for a painted, maximalist film identity.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Minimalist film posters reduce a story to one symbol while Ghanaian posters cram in everything; reach for the latter when a brief needs maximal spectacle.
- Afrobeat Sleeve Art Pairs well · Another West African painted vernacular with bodies crowding the frame; borrow its looming heads for a sleeve's front and Afrobeat's strips for the back.
- Nollywood Video Jacket & Film Poster Contrasts · Its painted neighbour: Ghanaian video clubs had sign painters hand-paint posters for many of the same Nigerian films, alongside Hollywood, Hong Kong and Indian ones. Swap the cut-out photographs for brushwork on flour sacks to move from one to the other.
- Matatu & Nganya Art Contrasts · Both are commissioned African street art built on looming painted heads, but Ghana's posters are gestural sign-painter enamel on flour sacks that invent gore and muscle for a film, while the nganya's stars are smooth, airbrushed likenesses fitted to a glossy vehicle body.
- Kinshasa Popular Painting Contrasts · Same sign-painter roots, opposite use of words: Ghanaian posters letter only a film title to sell a lurid scene, while Kinshasa paintings fill the scene with commentary to be read.
- Pulp Magazine Cover Contrasts · A painted-sensational neighbour: the pulp painting is an original reproduced by offset under a printed masthead, while the Ghanaian poster is painted directly on the final surface.
With Ghanaian Funeral Poster
- Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems Pairs well · A multicoloured strip border like kente's already frames some funeral banners; frame a portrait with a woven-strip border or a single adinkra sign whose proverb suits a death, learning its meaning first and keeping sacred signs out of trivial use.
- Lebanese Civil War Party Poster Contrasts · Both are public obituaries pasted on walls, with a straight photograph of the dead, the name and the dates, but a martyr poster is issued in series by a party under its emblem and slogans to claim a quarter, while a Ghanaian funeral poster is commissioned by one family to invite mourners and rank its kin; take the portrait-and-header format without the partisan voice.
- African Wax & Fancy Print Pairs well · Bredenbröker lists commemorative T-shirts, mugs and handkerchiefs beside the posters and banners as popular items that commemorate the dead in public, and wax print's one-sided fancy prints already serve as commemorative cloth with portraits; pair a funeral poster's photograph, name and age badge with a fancy-print repeat for a commemorative textile, keeping real people's faces and names out of new work.
- South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi) Pairs well · Both work in the street-level commercial vernacular of outlined lettering, badges and many typefaces at once, but Ijusi collages township signage as a designer's quotation while the funeral poster is that vernacular in use; pair the funeral poster's photographic portrait and ranked lists with Ijusi's collage for a layered, local announcement.