Stylogeny combining Ghanaian Movie Poster × Pulp Magazine Cover

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Style combination · Contrasts

Ghanaian Movie Poster × Pulp Magazine Cover

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.

From the research on Pulp Magazine Cover

Mix them and make something Ghanaian Movie Poster Pulp Magazine Cover

NOW!Ghanaian Movie Poster × Pulp Magazine Cover
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Ghanaian Movie Poster, their arrangement from Pulp Magazine Cover, the finish from Ghanaian Movie Poster. 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.

Ghanaian Movie Poster Pulp Magazine Cover

Type from Pulp Magazine Cover
Colour from Ghanaian Movie Poster
Form from Ghanaian Movie Poster
Composition from Pulp Magazine Cover
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 · Pulp Magazine Cover

Now!

Bungee Shade, standing in for Hand-lettered shaded mastheads

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 Pulp Magazine Cover. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Ghanaian Movie Poster Pulp Magazine Cover

  • #f6c90e ground · 36%
  • #111111 ink · 14%
  • #1e6fd9 accent · 18%
  • #c8281e accent · 14%
  • #1d4a8a accent · 10%
  • #2b9348 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f6c90e;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #1e6fd9;
  --accent-2: #c8281e;
  --accent-3: #1d4a8a;
  --accent-4: #2b9348;
  --font-display: "Bungee Shade", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Pulp Magazine Cover: Pulp covers sold peril through sexualised and violent imagery: the 'damsel in distress' was often half-dressed or bound, and Margaret Brundage's Weird Tales covers (1933-38) showed nude or semi-nude women, with whipping scenes noted as controversial, until a new decency standard was imposed on newsstand pulps in 1938. Spicy Detective and the other 'spicy' pulps made this their selling point. Pulp fiction of the 1930s also carried many Yellow Peril villains loosely based on Fu Manchu, so cover villains often rest on racial caricature, and exoticising colonial stereotypes were common too. Do not copy these conventions as neutral decoration: if the style is used, keep the drama but drop the gendered violence and ethnic stereotypes, or treat them knowingly and critically.

04

The two styles

A painted horror-adventure poster titled “BLOOD SERPENT” shows a gigantic, fanged snake towering over a frightened woman in torn red clothing and a man raising a machete. A looming man adorned with skulls reaches forward above a burning village, with running figures, lightning, bones and bloody skulls filling the scene. 1985–2005 · Sub-Saharan Africa 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. A snarling jaguar lunges toward a man brandishing a knife as a frightened woman clings to the stone ruins below him. A jungle valley and stepped temple fill the background beneath the enormous yellow title “TEMPLE PERIL” on red. 1896–1957 · North America Pulp Magazine Cover The painted colour covers of American pulp fiction magazines, printed on slicker cover stock around cheap wood-pulp interiors (period 1896 to 1957, the year the American News Company was liquidated, a date sometimes taken as the end of the pulp era). An original painting, reproduced by offset, shows one lurid scene of peril, a heroic figure, a threatened woman and a villain or monster, under a huge masthead, and the cover alone had to sell the issue on the newsstand.

05

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