Style combination · Pairs well
Mexican Calendar Chromo × Mexican Historieta
Both are mid-century Mexican mass pictures painted for the street and the home; borrow the chromo's glowing painted pin-up and romantic scene for a historieta cover, and keep the outlined masthead and the boxed cover line.
Mix them and make something Mexican Calendar Chromo Mexican Historieta
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.
Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos) Mexican Historieta (Pepines to Sensacionales)
- Type from Mexican Historieta
- Colour from Mexican Calendar Chromo
- Form from Mexican Historieta
- Composition from Mexican Calendar Chromo
- Surface from Mexican Historieta
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Mexican Historieta
Bloom
Londrina Solid, standing in for Hand-lettered balloon and caption text written by a letterer on each page (El Libro Vaquero still had its balloons lettered by hand in 2012)
Text · Mexican Calendar Chromo
Mexico's give-away advertising calendars, at their height from the 1930s to the late 1960s. Printers led by Galas de México kept studios of painters, among them Jesús Helguera, Eduardo Cataño, Jorge González Camarena and Josep Renau, whose large oil paintings were printed by offset above a sponsor's name and a small calendar pad. In an idealising academic realism touched by Hollywood glamour they staged Aztec legends as melodrama, charros and chinas poblanas, saints, film stars and pin-ups, and hung all year in homes, shops and workshops.
Archivo; Mexican Calendar Chromo used The sponsor's name and address overprinted in the band left blank below the picture and Brand logotypes painted into the picture or carried on the product
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Mexican Calendar Chromo, with a counter-accent from Mexican Historieta. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos) Mexican Historieta (Pepines to Sensacionales)
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#f0c4a8ground · 36% -
#1f4e8cink · 14% -
#c8372daccent · 18% -
#a8693faccent · 14% -
#2a9fd2accent · 10% -
#3d8b4faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f0c4a8;
--ink: #1f4e8c;
--accent-1: #c8372d;
--accent-2: #a8693f;
--accent-3: #2a9fd2;
--accent-4: #3d8b4f;
--font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos): The Aztec scenes are a nationalist fantasy of the pre-Hispanic past painted by academically trained artists, several of them born or raised in Spain, not Indigenous art: do not present them as Nahua or Mexica tradition or copy their feathered costumes as if they were ethnography. The saints and the Virgin of Guadalupe are devotional images that many owners pray before, so do not parody them, and the pin-ups were painted, as a UNAM study of the Galas archive puts it, to satisfy male longing and promote the sponsors' brands, carrying old and new stereotypes of women. The paintings are still in copyright (Helguera died in 1971) and Grupo Carso holds the rights to the Galas archive, while Alta reported in 2023 that Calendarios Landin owns the rights to Helguera, so paint new pictures in the manner rather than retouching old chromos.
Mexican Historieta (Pepines to Sensacionales): Memín Pinguín is drawn in the 'darky' iconography of blackface, and his mother as a 'mammy' caricature; his 2005 Mexican stamps were criticised by the White House press secretary ('racial stereotypes are offensive no matter what their origin'), Jesse Jackson and the Hispanic civil-rights groups LULAC and NCLR, so do not copy his features or use racial caricature of any kind, and give every character the same anatomy and drawing care. Kalimán is an Orientalist figure, a turbaned 'prince of India' and mystic: do not take him as a model for exoticised 'Oriental' types. The Sensacionales and the Libro Vaquero covers sell women's bodies to male readers and are often called machista: draw adults with dignity and consent and leave out the stock 'easy woman'. Memín, Kalimán, La Familia Burrón, Lágrimas, Risas y Amor and El Libro Vaquero are still owned by their publishers and heirs: draw your own characters and mastheads, never ask an image model for these characters or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page or cover as a vintage historieta.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Mexican Calendar Chromo
- Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai Contrasts · Both are tobacco-sponsored calendar pictures of beauties, but yuefenpai set softly rubbed watercolour women inside decorative borders with the products alongside, while the Mexican chromo is an oil painting of a whole scene that fills the sheet, with the pad pasted at its foot.
- Egyptian Painted Film Poster Contrasts · Both paint the stars of a national cinema's golden age, but the Egyptian poster collages star heads under huge calligraphic titles, while the chromo paints one unified scene and keeps its lettering to a small band below.
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · Both idealise the nation in heroic academic realism, but the Socialist Realist poster adds slogans and marching crowds to mobilise, while the chromo sells beer and cigarettes with romance and nostalgia; borrow its heroic anatomy for a national-history scene and leave the slogan out.
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Contrasts · Posada's broadsheets are black relief cuts under shouting type, sold for news and satire; the chromo is a full-colour oil painting given away to be admired all year, with the type kept small and out of the picture.
- Lotería Card Imagery (Mexican Lotería) Contrasts · Both are popular Mexican colour prints for everyday use, but the lotería sets one flat, outlined emblem figure per numbered card in a ruled frame, named in capitals at the foot, for a game, while the chromo paints one modelled scene in deep landscape to hang for a year.
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Grocery stores, poultry shops and workshops gave the calendars to their customers; pair a painted rótulo for the shop's name with a chromo-style painting for the look of a mid-century Mexican neighbourhood business.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Contrasts · Both grew out of post-revolutionary Mexico and picture its history, but the TGP cut black-and-white linocuts and woodcuts with bold headlines for popular and anti-fascist struggles, while the calendar painters made saturated oils of an idealised Mexico to sell beer and cigarettes.
- Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art Contrasts · Both are give-away calendars that reproduce commissioned paintings above a sponsor's name, but Indian bazaar art centres a frontal deity in haloes, gold and ornamental frames for worship, while the Mexican chromo stages a secular scene in deep landscape (a legend, a charro, a film star, a pin-up) with no frame around it; its saints are one genre among many.
With Mexican Historieta
- Escuela Bruguera (Spanish Humour Comics) Contrasts · Two Spanish-language humour lines of the same decades: Bruguera's tebeos are flat-coloured slapstick for children, while the Sensacionales caricature adult barrio and market types in crowded, fully painted scenes with sex and double meanings.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Contrasts · Paquín and Pepín began with American syndicated strips and Novaro brought in the American comic-book format in 1949, but the Mexican historieta keeps one sepia or green ink and tonal wash where the American book has four flat colours over Ben-Day dots, and melodrama where it has superheroes.
- Argentine Adventure Historieta (Oesterheld–Breccia) Contrasts · Both are Latin American newsstand comics of the mid-century with colour kept for the cover; the Argentine adventure historieta builds its pages from solid black brush ink and side light around an auteur's hand, while the Mexican historieta models its figures in tonal wash, prints them in one brown or green ink and tells anonymous, industrial melodrama.
- Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) Contrasts · Both sold sentimental melodrama in sequential panels to a mass, largely female and working-class readership; the fotoromanzo photographs actors, while the historieta draws its lovers in wash, and José G. Cruz's photomontage melodramas and the first, photonovel issues of Lágrimas, Risas y Amor sit between the two.
- Filipino Komiks Contrasts · The nearest cousin: another mass anthology of romantic serials with painted covers. Komiks model their figures in hatched and feathered black brush line; choose the Mexican historieta for tonal wash in sepia ink and for the pocket digest with its crowded painted cover.