Stylogeny combining Kanga × Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics

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Style combination · Pairs well

Kanga × Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics

Both put a sentence on a cloth worn on the body so that the wearer speaks through it; borrow the kanga's framed field and boxed saying to give a protest scarf a composed layout without losing the one-colour code.

From the research on Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave)

Mix them and make something Kanga Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics

FIESTAKanga × Latin American1886 · 2015
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Kanga, their arrangement from Kanga, the finish from Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics. 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.

Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth) Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave)

Type from Kanga
Colour from Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics
Form from Kanga
Composition from Kanga
Surface from Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Kanga

Fiesta

Agbalumo; Kanga used Plain sans capitals and Hand-drawn block capitals

Text · Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics

The graphics of Latin America's feminist tide, a mass movement since Ni Una Menos (Buenos Aires, 3 June 2015) and the 2018 'marea verde' for legal abortion, though its scarf dates from 2003. Its identity is an object and a colour: a green triangle of cloth printed in white with the Campaign's emblem and slogan, tied to necks, wrists and bags until a crowd turns green. Around it: slogans hand-lettered on cardboard and walls, violet for feminism, linocut posters, and in Mexico purple antimonumentas, Venus signs with a raised fist lettered with demands and the names of murdered women.

Oswald; Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics used The Campaign's white print on the green scarf and Hand-lettered placards in marker or paint on cardboard and white board, in capitals or plain handwriting, often framed by Spanish opening and closing question and exclamation marks ('¿TE PARECEMOS MUCHAS? ¡NOS FALTAN MILES!!', 8M march, Mexico City, 2020)

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics, with a counter-accent from Kanga. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth) Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave)

  • #ffffff ground · 36%
  • #141414 ink · 14%
  • #00964b accent · 18%
  • #f0b323 accent · 14%
  • #e46fae accent · 10%
  • #c4262e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffffff;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #00964b;
  --accent-2: #f0b323;
  --accent-3: #e46fae;
  --accent-4: #c4262e;
  --font-display: "Agbalumo", cursive;
  --font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth): Kanga is the living dress of East African, especially Swahili, women: it wraps newborns, shrouds the dead and carries messages between neighbours, spouses and rivals, so its words matter more than its pattern. Never fill the text box with invented pseudo-Swahili or decorative Arabic letters (set Arabic script only when it spells a real, checked saying); use the brief's own words, or a real saying checked by a Swahili speaker with its translation, because a careless phrase can insult and some sayings invoke God. Some designs carry meanings of their own: the kisutu is bridal wear, in green or blue for a second or third marriage. Do not reuse portraits of real politicians or party emblems from campaign kangas out of context, and credit and commission East African designers and mills rather than presenting a generic 'African print'.

Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave): This is the living language of a movement against femicide and for abortion rights whose subjects are real women, many murdered or disappeared, and whose families raised the antimonumentas and wrote the names on them: do not reuse victims' names, photographs, pink crosses or the antimonumentas as decoration, merchandise or a backdrop for a brand. The green scarf is the emblem of the Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal, Seguro y Gratuito and Ni Una Menos is a collective; do not put their emblem, slogan or name on your own products, fundraising or advertising, or dress a company's message in green and violet to borrow the movements' credibility. The scarf is still contested: it has been banned in some schools, wearing it can bring backlash, it is answered by the anti-abortion pañuelo celeste, and Argentina's legal-abortion law of 2020 has faced calls for repeal, so do not use green as a neutral 'hope' colour where it will be read as a political position. Never present a generated image as documentation of a real protest.

04

The two styles

A symmetrical folk-style illustration shows a leafy tree with a black and red trunk between two crested birds, surrounded by red flowers and berry-bearing branches. A blue border patterned with yellow flowers and green leaves frames the image, with “PAMOJA DAIMA” in black on a yellow panel at the bottom. 1886–present · Sub-Saharan Africa Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth) Printed cotton wraps worn by women of the Swahili coast and its hinterland since the late nineteenth century, bought in pairs. Each kanga is one composition, not cloth by the yard: a wide border (pindo) frames a central field (mji) holding one motif or an even repeat, and a short Swahili saying (jina) in capitals sits in a box at the foot of the field. Woodblock-printed at first and industrially printed since, flat in a few bold colours, the cloth is chosen and worn for what its words say: proverbs, barbs, blessings and slogans. Three stylized women look upward against a purple background, wearing green neckerchiefs with white flower emblems. Large rough-edged pink lettering reading “LIBRES” fills the top, surrounded by pink radiating strokes. 2015–present · Latin America & Caribbean Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave) The graphics of Latin America's feminist tide, a mass movement since Ni Una Menos (Buenos Aires, 3 June 2015) and the 2018 'marea verde' for legal abortion, though its scarf dates from 2003. Its identity is an object and a colour: a green triangle of cloth printed in white with the Campaign's emblem and slogan, tied to necks, wrists and bags until a crowd turns green. Around it: slogans hand-lettered on cardboard and walls, violet for feminism, linocut posters, and in Mexico purple antimonumentas, Venus signs with a raised fist lettered with demands and the names of murdered women.

05

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With Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics

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