Style combination · Pairs well
Kalighat Pat × Mexican Popular Graphics
Posada's broadsheets are its closest cousin in function; pair a Kalighat-style brush figure with shouting display type for a satirical street-print series.
Mix them and make something Kalighat Pat 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.
Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)
- Type from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Colour from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Form from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Composition from Kalighat Pat
- Surface from Kalighat Pat
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 · Kalighat Pat
The bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs. A single plaque-like figure stands on unpainted paper, drawn with one loaded, sweeping brushstroke that both outlines and shades it. Deities share the repertoire with satire of the Westernised babu, domestic scandal and street life.
Archivo; Kalighat Pat used Bengali captions cut into Battala woodblocks and Bengali letterpress text of Battala chapbooks and almanacs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Mexican Popular Graphics, with a counter-accent from Kalighat Pat. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)
-
#efe6cfground · 36% -
#151515ink · 14% -
#d6337faccent · 18% -
#e0a92eaccent · 14% -
#5aa05aaccent · 10% -
#c73e2baccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe6cf;
--ink: #151515;
--accent-1: #d6337f;
--accent-2: #e0a92e;
--accent-3: #5aa05a;
--accent-4: #c73e2b;
--font-display: "Alfa Slab One", serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints: Many sheets depict Hindu deities that are still worshipped (Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, Krishna), and some were painted for Muslim patrons (Duldul, Imam Husain's horse), so do not distort, crop or place these figures in mocking or disposable contexts. The patua (chitrakar) families of Bengal still practise the art; commission or credit living painters rather than tracing museum images, and name the artist where known.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Kalighat Pat
- Lubok Popular Print Pairs well · Both are cheap popular prints that mix piety with satire and splash colour on by hand; combine them for a folk-print exhibition or publishing identity.
- Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Contrasts · The glossy, crowded naturalism of calendar art displaced the pat; set an empty-ground Kalighat line beside it to contrast quick satire with devotional finish.
- Bengali Modernist Book Cover (Prachchhad) Pairs well · Reduce the Kalighat contour to a bold, flat brush line, as Bengali cover designers later did, to give modern literary covers a local voice.
- Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics Pairs well · Santiniketan took its quick, loaded brush contour from Bengal's pata painters; combine the two for single figures on bare paper, with Kalighat's satire or Haripura's dignity.
- Warli Painting Contrasts · Both are Indian painting traditions taken up by a market; Kalighat isolates one brushed, coloured figure on a pale ground, Warli spreads many white pictogram figures over a dark one, so choose between a single satirical figure and a communal crowd.
- Mithila (Madhubani) Painting Contrasts · Both are eastern Indian popular pictures of deities, but Kalighat sweeps a few brushed figures across an empty sheet while Mithila outlines everything and fills every gap; set them side by side to show sparse brush against dense line.
- Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking Contrasts · Both isolate a stylised figure on pale paper with little else; Kalighat paints it with a loaded brush and a sweeping outline for a bazaar market, Kinngait cuts it in stone or daubs it through a stencil, so take Kalighat for a painted, satirical line and Kinngait for a still, printed silhouette.
- Dhaka Rickshaw Painting Pairs well · Another Bengali popular-picture tradition made by working artists for ordinary buyers.
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.
- Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Pairs well · 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.
- 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.