Style combination · Pairs well
Vicente Rojo × Taller de Gráfica Popular
Rojo set Leopoldo Méndez's engravings in the Revista de la Universidad de México (no. 3, 1971); a black linocut framed by fine rules on a white page joins Mexico City's militant print culture to its editorial modernism.
Mix them and make something Vicente Rojo Taller de Gráfica Popular
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.
Vicente Rojo & Mexican Editorial Modernism Taller de Gráfica Popular
- Type from Taller de Gráfica Popular
- Colour from Vicente Rojo
- Form from Vicente Rojo
- Composition from Vicente Rojo
- Surface from Taller de Gráfica Popular
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Taller de Gráfica Popular
Act
Inter Tight, standing in for Letterpress grotesque and slab-serif captions
Text · Vicente Rojo
The design of Mexico City's literary and cultural press, shaped from the 1950s by the Barcelona-born exile Vicente Rojo: México en la Cultura, the Revista de la Universidad, Plural, La Jornada and the covers of Ediciones Era. Taught by Miguel Prieto to add nothing beyond what must be read, it sets an image on white inside a fine rule, orders text with the printer's stock (rules, bullets, stars, pointing hands), prints grainy high-contrast photographs in two inks, and keeps design below the text.
Jost; Vicente Rojo used Bodoni and Egyptian slab serifs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Vicente Rojo, with a counter-accent from Taller de Gráfica Popular. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Vicente Rojo & Mexican Editorial Modernism Taller de Gráfica Popular
-
#f5f2eaground · 36% -
#151515ink · 14% -
#e04a1faccent · 18% -
#d9a820accent · 14% -
#d9c39aaccent · 10% -
#1f4f9caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f5f2ea;
--ink: #151515;
--accent-1: #e04a1f;
--accent-2: #d9a820;
--accent-3: #d9c39a;
--accent-4: #1f4f9c;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Vicente Rojo & Mexican Editorial Modernism: Rojo's covers, his drawn alphabets and the T of his Negaciones paintings are one artist's work: borrow the method (a white ground, a fine rule, the printer's stock, a two-ink treated photograph), not a particular Era cover or his signs, and never present a new design as an Era book. Some covers draw on pre-Hispanic codices (Los indios de México) and Mexican popular imagery (Cien años de soledad); do not lift codex figures as decoration.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Vicente Rojo
- American Mid-Century Modernism Contrasts · Both made idea-led covers in the same decades, but American modernists composed asymmetric cut-paper shapes and hand-drawn marks in bright flat colours, while Rojo, who found the US and French advertising manuals he could get in Mexico not to his liking, framed one treated photograph or found vignette on white with a fine rule and Bodoni, Baskerville or Futura, ordering the text with printer's ornaments. Choose Rojo when the type should serve the reading rather than play the joke.
- Di Tella Graphic Design (Instituto Torcuato Di Tella) Pairs well · Two Latin American cultural presses of the 1960s working in one or two inks: add the Di Tella's giant title word to Rojo's framed image and ordered text for a cultural programme or catalogue.
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Pairs well · Rojo's pointing hands, stars, bullets, double rules, borders and wood types come from the nineteenth-century printer's stock; take a few more of them, sparingly and in hierarchy, to warm a modernist page without crowding it.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Rojo admired Swiss printing such as the Zurich magazine Du, but kept Prieto's axial book page, classical faces and printer's ornaments instead of a modular grid and one neo-grotesque; set them side by side to choose between literary warmth and institutional neutrality.
- Penguin Paperback Design (Three Bands to the Marber Grid) Pairs well · Rojo's Ediciones Era covers share the white ground, fine rules and one image in a fixed field; combine them for a literary list that needs both a rigid frame and grainy, two-ink photographs.
With Taller de Gráfica Popular
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Both favour cheap, direct, monochrome reproduction; a linocut figure with photocopied type gives protest graphics hand-made urgency.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Pairs well · Combine TGP's black linocut figures with Cuban flat colour for politically engaged posters with a hand-made Latin American lineage.
- Art Deco Contrasts · Glossy Deco glamour versus gouged, populist black and white: use the contrast to separate luxury from solidarity.
- Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement Pairs well · China's 1930s–40s woodcut movement ran in parallel with the TGP; combine the two black-line traditions for prints about labour and resistance across continents.
- Minjung Woodcut Graphics (Korean People's Art) Contrasts · Nearest in the atlas, and the closest Mexican print lineage to the Mexican Muralism that MMCA names as a source: both cut black-line people's prints for movements, but TGP sets condensed Latin capitals and lithographs, while Minjung prints carry short Hangul slogans and dancing, ritual-derived figures, and are scaled up to geolgae banners.
- Brazilian Concrete Design Contrasts · Mexico's figurative, militant linocuts are Latin America's other modernism; contrast them to choose between abstraction and narrative.
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Pairs well · The TGP took Posada as its ancestor; combine his calavera satire with linocut political posters for socially engaged print.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Pairs well · Leopoldo Méndez carried the Stridentist woodcut into the Taller de Gráfica Popular in 1937; give a TGP print a radio mast or a skyline on a steep diagonal and one bright ink to bring back the machine-age optimism.