Style combination · Pairs well
Imagerie d'Épinal × Mexican Popular Graphics
Posada's hojas volantes are another pedlar broadsheet with a crude relief picture over a block of text; add Épinal's stencil colour to a black relief broadsheet for a hand-coloured street print.
Mix them and make something Imagerie d'Épinal Mexican Popular Graphics
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.
Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)
- Type from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Colour from Imagerie d'Épinal
- Form from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Composition from Imagerie d'Épinal
- Surface from Imagerie d'Épinal
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Mexican Popular Graphics
Square
Alfa Slab One, standing in for Nineteenth-century display types: Egyptians, Tuscans and Latins
Text · Imagerie d'Épinal
Cheap single-sheet popular prints sold by pedlars across 19th-century Europe, led by the Pellerin imagerie at Épinal and the Neuruppin Bilderbogen. A black woodcut, and later a lithograph, was coloured by hand through stencils in a few flat colours that drift past the outlines: Napoleonic battles, saints, rows of soldiers to cut out, and stories told in grids of equal captioned cases, under a title in roman capitals, or Fraktur in Germany.
Bodoni Moda; Imagerie d'Épinal used Bold modern-face (Didone) roman capitals for the centred title, sometimes shaded or outlined and Small roman text in a justified block beneath the picture, with the imprint ('De la fabrique de Pellerin, imprimeur-libraire, à Épinal') in capitals and 'Propriété de l'Éditeur. Déposé.' in italic
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Imagerie d'Épinal, with a counter-accent from Mexican Popular Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)
-
#efe6ccground · 36% -
#1c1a17ink · 14% -
#e4bb3aaccent · 18% -
#d6337faccent · 14% -
#b8283aaccent · 10% -
#5aa05aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe6cc;
--ink: #1c1a17;
--accent-1: #e4bb3a;
--accent-2: #d6337f;
--accent-3: #b8283a;
--accent-4: #5aa05a;
--font-display: "Alfa Slab One", serif;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}Use it with care
Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen: Many sheets carry nationalist, militarist and colonial messages, from the Napoleonic legend to colonial campaigns such as the Tonkin war, and some show colonised peoples as 'savages' (the Kühn Robinson sheet captions 'die Wilden' slaughtering captives at a feast), so do not reproduce these figures as period charm; the Imagerie d'Épinal still trades under its name, so draw new sheets rather than copying its marks.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Imagerie d'Épinal
- Lubok Popular Print Contrasts · Both are pedlars' broadsheets coloured by hand, but the lubok crams verse into the gaps around its figures and brushes washes on freely, while the Épinal sheet keeps its text beneath a ruled frame and stencils colour across rows of repeated figures; choose the lubok for jostling satire and Épinal for an orderly catalogue or story.
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics Pairs well · Both line up identical figures in rows, Épinal to be cut out as toy soldiers and Isotype to count; borrow Isotype's rule that one figure stands for a quantity to turn a sheet of soldiers into a readable chart.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Riso's few flat inks and drifting registration reproduce the stencil float of an Épinal sheet; print rows of repeated figures in red, blue and yellow over a black key for a contemporary imagerie.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Pairs well · Both read as captioned grids of drawn cases with clear contour and flat colour; give a clear-line strip Épinal's stencil drift, roman-capital title and caption under every case for a 19th-century picture-story feel.
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Contrasts · The same century's printers, but jobbing letterpress leads with mixed display type in one or two inks, while the Épinal sheet leads with a stencil-coloured picture and keeps type to a title and a caption block; set them side by side to choose between a notice and a picture.
- Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram) Contrasts · Both centre a framed picture over a block of text, but the Épinal sheet tells a popular story in stencil colour for a broad public, while the emblem is a learned monochrome riddle, one to a page, read slowly in sequence.
- Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards Contrasts · Both stencil-colour a black woodcut key in a few drifting colours, but the Épinal sheet tells a story in grids of captioned cases and marches rows of soldiers, while the tarot card isolates one emblematic subject under a numeral and a title; choose tarot for a single symbol, Épinal for a sequence.
- Lotería Card Imagery (Mexican Lotería) Contrasts · Both are cheap coloured popular prints of stock figures in ruled frames under capital captions, but an Épinal sheet tells a story or musters a row of soldiers across many cases, while a lotería card holds one emblem and the tabla's cells have no order: the caller draws them by chance.
With Mexican Popular Graphics
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Both are cheap, fast and irreverent; reuse stock cuts and coloured paper in zines for the same street-sheet energy.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Isolate one calavera on an empty field to show how much of the style's force comes from crowding.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Pairs well · The TGP took Posada as its ancestor; combine his calavera satire with linocut political posters for socially engaged print.
- Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Pairs well · Brazil's cordel covers are a parallel relief-picture-on-cheap-paper tradition; pair Posada-style broadsides with cordel woodcuts for street ephemera that tells a story in one picture.
- Lubok Popular Print Pairs well · Posada's broadsheets and lubki share cheap paper, crude relief cuts and street humour; brush lubok-style washes over a black relief broadsheet.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Contrasts · Same Mexico City walls a generation apart: Posada's broadsheets of skeletons, crimes and saints against Maples Arce's broadside of radio, speed and skyscrapers; set one beside the other to stage folk memory against the machine future.
- Lira Popular (Chilean Illustrated Verse Broadsheets) Pairs well · A sibling street broadside; borrow Posada's coloured paper and single big cut, or keep the Chilean frieze of cuts over many ruled verse columns.
- Onitsha Market Pamphlets Pairs well · Both are penny print for newly literate readers; share the sensational headline and moral tone, but let Onitsha supply photographs where Posada cut relief blocks.