Style combination · Pairs well
Grapus × Solidarność
Opposite sides of the communist divide but the same Polish poster lineage: Janiszewski's crowded red letters and Grapus's loose handwriting both make a movement's voice look written by people, not set by an office.
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.
Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective) Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics
- Type from Solidarność
- Colour from Solidarność
- Form from Solidarność
- Composition from Grapus
- Surface from Grapus
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Solidarność
Wake
Londrina Solid, standing in for Red hand-drawn capitals on amateur posters of the 1989 election campaign, such as Chylak's 'Głosuj na Solidarność'
Text · Grapus
The posters and identities of Grapus, a Paris collective founded in 1970 by Communist Party members who had met in the 1968 poster workshops. Signed only 'Grapus' and the year, they served the PCF, the CGT union, suburban towns, theatres and causes, later ministries and museums: one visual idea or pun, on white paper or as a whole-sheet flag, photograph or night sky, photographs painted over beside childlike drawings, and handwritten slogans running round the image, militant but joyful. Split over the Louvre commission, the group dissolved at the end of 1990 (formally on 1 January 1991).
Caveat; Grapus used Handwriting in brush, felt-tip marker and crayon, written on the artwork in capitals or mixed case and often running sideways or round the picture, as on Poésies Aubervilliers (1983) and Peace! (1990) and The scrawled collective signature 'Grapus' with the year ('Grapus 82'), written on every sheet in place of an individual's name
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Solidarność, with a counter-accent from Grapus. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective) Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics
-
#f3efe6ground · 36% -
#161616ink · 14% -
#d4161faccent · 18% -
#f5c518accent · 14% -
#a5835caccent · 10% -
#3f7a3caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f3efe6;
--ink: #161616;
--accent-1: #d4161f;
--accent-2: #f5c518;
--accent-3: #a5835c;
--accent-4: #3f7a3c;
--font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
--font-text: "Caveat", cursive;
}Use it with care
Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective): Grapus images were conceived and signed collectively, and Pierre Bernard and his former colleagues publicly disputed authorship and copyright in 2006, after his Erasmus Prize and a poster catalogue, so credit 'Grapus' rather than one designer; logos such as the Secours populaire's winged hand belong to the organisations that commissioned them, and the posters' party symbols and partisan slogans (the hammer and sickle, the PLO line on Palestine) should not be reused as neutral decoration.
Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics: This is still a living, contested sign: the NSZZ Solidarność union claims the logo, and a Gdańsk court awarded it the copyright and barred Janiszewski from licensing it, a ruling the Warsaw Court of Appeal upheld (reported in November 2025), while Fydrych won a copyright case over his Orange Alternative dwarf against the city of Wrocław in 2014; do not reuse the logo, or a pastiche of it, for a brand or campaign as if it were public domain. The iconography also carries Catholic symbols and the memory of people killed under martial law and after it (the nine Wujek miners shot in December 1981; Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, murdered by security-service officers in October 1984). Solidaryca is still used for logos and slogans about Poland, freedom and democracy, its designer has criticised its exploitation by right-wing groups, and the union itself has grown increasingly aligned with Law and Justice, so do not use the cross, the candles or the lettering as decoration or to suggest an endorsement nobody gave.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Grapus
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Both scribble over photographs, but punk's photocopied blacks and ransom-note type are cheap and nihilist, while Grapus prints bright offset colour, mostly on white, in an optimistic, party-backed voice.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Contrasts · The founders came out of the 1968 workshops, but the Beaux-Arts atelier pulled one flat ink, one brushed silhouette and a slogan in rough capitals; Grapus layers photographs, paint and coloured handwriting, mostly on white. Use the first for overnight urgency, Grapus for a warmer, longer campaign.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Grapus rejected the Swiss style taught at the Arts Déco; set a scrawled, painted headline against a grid of neutral sans to stage that quarrel between personal voice and neutrality.
- Australian Poster Collective Screenprints Pairs well · Both credit a collective rather than a designer and work for unions and community clients; borrow the Australians' hand-cut screenprint stencils when a Grapus-style idea must be printed cheaply and locally.
With Solidarność
- Extinction Rebellion Graphics Pairs well · A later movement that also lives on one simple mark anyone can copy by hand; pair a single shared emblem with locally made, cheaply printed posters to keep a campaign recognisable without central design.
- Punk & DIY Zine Contrasts · Same years and the same cheap reproduction, opposite temper: punk defaces the flag and the monarch with ransom-note collage, while Solidarity graphics carry the flag and the cross with reverence and keep to one disciplined hand-drawn word.
- NSK Retro-Avant-Garde Contrasts · Both answered a socialist state in the 1980s, but NSK impersonates power in solemn, centred heraldry, while the Polish underground mocked it with jokes, and the Orange Alternative with dwarfs, and Solidarity kept its reverence for church and nation; choose between over-identifying and laughing.
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · As the V&A notes, Janiszewski replaced the socialist motif of a leader conducting the crowd with the national flag; set a crowd of equal letters against one heroic leader to make that point.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Pairs well · Both made anonymous protest prints on whatever press was to hand in one or two inks; borrow the Atelier's single brushed silhouette to give a crowded Solidarity-style word a figure to stand beside.
- Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave) Contrasts · Both are movement identities copied by hand in the street, but Solidarność gathered behind one logo of crowded red letters and printed posters, bulletins and stamps, while the green wave gathers behind a wearable cloth and a colour; letters as the sign against an object as the sign.
- Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives) Contrasts · Both made hand-lettered protest banners and cheap copies and answered force with irony, but Solidarność gathered under one logotype and a union, where these sheets were signed only by a town or a collective, bilingual and made for the feed; set them side by side to weigh one shared mark against many local, dated voices.
- Belarusian Protest Illustration (2020 Uprising) Contrasts · Both activate red-white national references, but the Belarusian sample places figures and visual metaphors ahead of the tightly joined lettering that defines Solidarność. Compare the role of a shared flag with that of a shared wordmark; do not infer a direct lineage.