Style combination · Contrasts
Mexican Popular Graphics × Persian Popular Narrative
Both are cheap popular print of heroes, saints and devils, but Posada's broadsheets set metal type beside relief cuts, while the Persian page is one handwritten lithograph in which calligraphy and drawing share the same pen.
Mix them and make something Mexican Popular Graphics Persian Popular Narrative
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 Popular Graphics (Posada) Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)
- Type from Persian Popular Narrative
- Colour from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Form from Mexican Popular Graphics
- Composition from Persian Popular Narrative
- Surface from Mexican Popular Graphics
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Persian Popular Narrative
Ours
Rakkas, standing in for Nastaʿlīq written by the lithographic scribes (kātebs), for verse and prose
Text · Mexican Popular Graphics
Cheap broadsheets, chapbooks and gazettes sold on the streets of Porfirian Mexico City by the publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and illustrated by Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada. A bold relief picture of crime, disaster, miracle or satire sits under shouting display type and columns of corridos, printed in black on brightly coloured cheap paper, while the calavera skeleton lampoons every class.
Bodoni Moda; Mexican Popular Graphics used Nineteenth-century display types and Modern (Didone) roman for corridos and verse
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Mexican Popular Graphics, with a counter-accent from Persian Popular Narrative. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada) Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)
-
#efe6cfground · 36% -
#151515ink · 14% -
#d6337faccent · 18% -
#c99a2eaccent · 14% -
#5aa05aaccent · 10% -
#b3302aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe6cf;
--ink: #151515;
--accent-1: #d6337f;
--accent-2: #c99a2e;
--accent-3: #5aa05a;
--accent-4: #b3302a;
--font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
--font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}Use it with care
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting): Many of these images depict Imam Husayn, his family and the martyrs of Karbala, whose mourning is at the heart of Shiʿa devotion, and coffeehouse paintings of Karbala still hang in tekyehs and are shown during Muharram; some lithographs also depict the Prophet Muhammad, which many Muslims consider forbidden. The lithographers often veiled the faces of the Prophet, ʿAli and Husayn or ringed a holy face with a halo, so keep that convention and never supply a face for the Prophet, ʿAli or Husayn. Do not use these figures as decoration, parody or throwaway packaging, and have any Persian or Arabic text, including names of God, the Prophet and the Imams, read by a fluent reader. Coffeehouse paintings are the work of named painters and their pupils, so credit them, and commission Iranian painters and calligraphers rather than tracing their work.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Mexican Popular Graphics
- Punk & DIY Zine Pairs well · Both are cheap, fast and irreverent; reuse stock cuts and coloured paper in zines for the same street-sheet energy.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Isolate one calavera on an empty field to show how much of the style's force comes from crowding.
- Taller de Gráfica Popular Pairs well · The TGP took Posada as its ancestor; combine his calavera satire with linocut political posters for socially engaged print.
- Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Pairs well · Brazil's cordel covers are a parallel relief-picture-on-cheap-paper tradition; pair Posada-style broadsides with cordel woodcuts for street ephemera that tells a story in one picture.
- Lubok Popular Print 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.
- Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen Pairs well · Posada's hojas volantes are another pedlar broadsheet with a crude relief picture over a block of text; add Épinal's stencil colour to a black relief broadsheet for a hand-coloured street print.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics Contrasts · Same Mexico City walls a generation apart: Posada's broadsheets of skeletons, crimes and saints against Maples Arce's broadside of radio, speed and skyscrapers; set one beside the other to stage folk memory against the machine future.
- Lira Popular (Chilean Illustrated Verse Broadsheets) Pairs well · A sibling street broadside; borrow Posada's coloured paper and single big cut, or keep the Chilean frieze of cuts over many ruled verse columns.
With Persian Popular Narrative
- Urdu Katib Lithography Pairs well · The same lithographed Nastaʿlīq page culture across Iran and India: Khoi's Tehran Shahnameh followed the pictures of the Persian-language Bombay edition of 1846, written by Reza al-Hoseini al-Shirazi. Add hatched, framed scenes to a katib's dense columns for an illustrated Persian or Urdu text page.
- Iranian Modernist Graphic Design Pairs well · Farshid Mesghali collaged coloured clippings of Qajar lithograph illustrations for a poster for the Tehran International Festival of Films for Children and Young Adults (dated November 1967 by Marzolph); crop and enlarge a hatched lithograph figure inside a modernist, white-ground layout.
- Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints Contrasts · Kalighat pats isolate one bold brushed figure on bare paper; the Persian lithograph crowds a whole hatched scene into a frame inside verse columns. Choose between the open single figure and the packed narrative page.
- Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting) Pairs well · Its popular heir: the same epics in ruled columns of Nastaʿlīq, but drawn in hatched black ink for lithography; pair a court-style coloured frame with a lithographic line drawing to move between luxury and street register.