Style combination · Contrasts
Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire × International Typographic Style
A calm grid and white space make the crammed, mocking page feel more chaotic.
Mix them and make something Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire International Typographic 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.
Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire International Typographic Style
- Type from International Typographic Style
- Colour from International Typographic Style
- Form from International Typographic Style
- Composition from Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire
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International Typographic Style avoids horror vacui: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Surface from Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire
The graphic voice of Il Male, the Roman satirical magazine of 1978-1982: forged front pages of real newspapers, photomontage and cartoons in a dense tabloid layout. It grew out of the left-wing milieu around the Movement of 1977, in the political tension of the late 1970s, and its fakes were sensational media pranks that could pass for the real paper. Unlike an original satirical tabloid such as O Pasquim, its signature is the counterfeit of an existing newspaper.
Newsreader; Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire used Newspaper mastheads imitated in the forgeries and Newspaper headline lettering imitated in the forgeries
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire International Typographic Style
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#f2f0e9ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#e1251baccent · 18% -
#1f4e9caccent · 14% -
#e2b93baccent · 10% -
#7a7a7aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2f0e9;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #e1251b;
--accent-2: #1f4e9c;
--accent-3: #e2b93b;
--accent-4: #7a7a7a;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Il Male Newspaper-Forgery Satire
- Situationist Détournement Graphics Pairs well · Take the cut-up method and add the dense tabloid page to turn theory into a prank.
- O Pasquim Satirical Press Pairs well · Another satirical newspaper with cartoons; Il Male differs by forging real papers' front pages rather than publishing an original tabloid.
With International Typographic Style
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Ornamental curves against an orthogonal grid make a strong deliberate tension.
- Brutalist Web Design Pairs well · Strip the grid to raw HTML defaults to get a rawer, contemporary take on Swiss honesty.
- Psychedelic Poster Contrasts · Its exact opposite on legibility; borrow one swirling element to break a too-cold Swiss layout.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Add Japanese restraint and emblematic colour fields to the grid for warmth without losing order.
- American Traditional Tattoo Flash Contrasts · Rational grid and sans-serif against sentimental, hand-lettered emblems: one flash motif on a Swiss layout makes a sharp contrast.
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Contrasts · Put a single tag or throw-up over a strict Swiss grid to stage the clash between institutional order and a street voice.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Set one loud appropriated Pop image inside a strict grid with a neutral grotesque so the irony reads as deliberate rather than chaotic.
- Italian Painted Film Poster (Rome Studios) Contrasts · Grid, restraint and photographic objectivity are the opposite of a crowded painted montage.