Style combination · Pairs well
Lubok Popular Print × Russian Futurist Book
The Futurists borrowed the lubok's crude contour and hand-cut lettering; pair them for folk-voiced print whose letters and figures are drawn by the same hand.
Mix them and make something Lubok Popular Print Russian Futurist Book
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.
Lubok Popular Print Russian Futurist Book
- Type from Russian Futurist Book
- Colour from Russian Futurist Book
- Form from Lubok Popular Print
- Composition from Lubok Popular Print
- Surface from Lubok Popular Print
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Russian Futurist Book
Wow
Caveat, standing in for The poets' own handwriting transferred to the lithographic stone (Rozanova and Kruchenykh's samopismo, 'self-writing')
Text · Lubok Popular Print
Cheap single-sheet Russian popular prints sold at fairs and by pedlars from the later 17th century: woodcut, later engraved and lithographed pictures of saints, fables, heroes, battles and satire in which text and image share one sheet. Thick-contoured, flattened figures fill the field, captions and rhymed verses crowd the gaps, episodes split into panels, and loud tempera washes brushed on by hand spill over the lines.
Archivo; Lubok Popular Print used Hand-cut Cyrillic lettering in the block, from Church Slavonic-style semi-uncial (poluustav) to civil script and Rubber-stamped and stencilled lettering imitating lubok woodcut letters in Russian Futurist books
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Russian Futurist Book, with a counter-accent from Lubok Popular Print. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Lubok Popular Print Russian Futurist Book
-
#ede4cfground · 36% -
#1c1a17ink · 14% -
#d6b44aaccent · 18% -
#b5463aaccent · 14% -
#b8996aaccent · 10% -
#8ea596accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ede4cf;
--ink: #1c1a17;
--accent-1: #d6b44a;
--accent-2: #b5463a;
--accent-3: #b8996a;
--accent-4: #8ea596;
--font-display: "Caveat", cursive;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Lubok Popular Print
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) 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.
- ROSTA Windows Pairs well · ROSTA windows inherited the lubok's numbered, captioned panels and rhymed text; combine the two for sequential agitational posters with a folk voice.
- Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Pairs well · Brazilian cordel is another chapbook woodcut tradition; set rhymed verse and a single crude block together, as both do, for narrative print with a vernacular voice.
- Nianhua & Chinese Folk Print Pairs well · Both are hand-coloured market woodcuts; take nianhua's symmetrical auspicious emblems and lubok's crowded captions and satire for festive print that also tells a story.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Lubok's crowding is its voice; isolate one figure on white to test how much of the meaning lives in the jostling text.
- Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen 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.
- Narbut School (Ukrainian Baroque Revival Graphics) Contrasts · Popular, coloured woodcut exuberance against Narbut's academic, restrained black line.
- Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints 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.
With Russian Futurist Book
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Small-run riso artist's books on tinted stock, with handwritten text and a collaged cover, recreate the Futurist pamphlet's economy today.
- Suprematism Contrasts · Malevich went from drawing crude figures in these books to pure geometry on white; pick Suprematism for cosmic order and the Futurist book for crowded, earthy handwork.
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Both turn cheap reproduction into an anti-professional stance; swap the photocopier for hand lithography or riso to get a punk zine with an archaic, painterly voice.
- Russian Constructivism Contrasts · Constructivism replaced this handwritten, primitivist page with grotesque type, rules and photomontage; set the two side by side to stage hand against machine.
- Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book Contrasts · The Futurist book crowds handwriting and crude drawing onto rough paper; the Leningrad picture book clears the page and lets a few flat planes float on it; choose between a dense handmade page and an airy, ordered one.
- Kultur-Lige & Yiddish Avant-Garde Book Design Contrasts · Its parent in method: artists drawing the whole page and printing it by lithography in small runs. The Futurist book is Cyrillic, mostly black and deliberately crude; the Kultur-Lige book is in Yiddish, earnest, and at its most ambitious in colour, and builds its pages from the Hebrew letter and synagogue ornament.
- Zenitism (Zenit Magazine Typography) Pairs well · Both treat the printed page as a manifesto in rough mixed type; combine them for a polemical artist's book.
- Mir iskusstva Book Art Contrasts · Both drew on the lubok, but the Futurists kept its crude cut, rough paper and handwriting while the World of Art refined it into a polished, bordered ensemble; choose between raw and ennobled folk sources.