Style combination · Pairs well
Vicente Rojo × Victorian Letterpress
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.
Mix them and make something Vicente Rojo Victorian Letterpress
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 Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from Victorian Letterpress
-
Vicente Rojo avoids eclectic mixing: this is where the two pull against each other.
- Colour from Vicente Rojo
- Form from Vicente Rojo
- Composition from Victorian Letterpress
- Surface from Victorian Letterpress
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Victorian Letterpress
Pop
Abril Fatface, standing in for Fat face romans (Thorne, Figgins)
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 Victorian Letterpress. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Vicente Rojo & Mexican Editorial Modernism Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
-
#f5f2eaground · 36% -
#151515ink · 14% -
#e04a1faccent · 18% -
#b3322baccent · 14% -
#d9a820accent · 10% -
#d9b45aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f5f2ea;
--ink: #151515;
--accent-1: #e04a1f;
--accent-2: #b3322b;
--accent-3: #d9a820;
--accent-4: #d9b45a;
--font-display: "Abril Fatface", 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.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Pairs well · 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.
- 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 Victorian Letterpress
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign writers and type founders traded letterforms; add brushed shading and drop shadows to wood-type headlines for a street-made feel.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revived Victorian display faces with irony; mix one wood-type headline with modern illustration for the same knowing nostalgia.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · One face, flush left and white space against a centred clamour of faces: use the contrast to test whether hierarchy needs variety at all.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Morris reacted against exactly this commercial clutter; set the two side by side to show craft restraint versus jobbing exuberance.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · A Victorian mixed-face handbill is the clutter Ulm's one-family rule was meant to cure; use it as a before-and-after foil.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Contrasts · Its black-letter-dense, type-and-ornament jobbing page is the opposite of a picture-led page; combine them by hanging a wood-type title over a flat colour picture.
- Dada Pairs well · Raid Victorian wood type and stock ornaments as the Dadaists did, but scatter them instead of centring them.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.