Stylogeny combining Milanese Industrial Modernism × Zagreb Modernist Graphics

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Style combination · Contrasts

Milanese Industrial Modernism × Zagreb Modernist Graphics

Milan's industrial modernism also builds posters from primitives and numerals, but prints offset for corporate patrons, overlaps transparent colour planes on generous white ground and loosens them with photomontage; Zagreb screenprints a few opaque inks for a gallery and a theatre and lets one multiplied unit or letter group fill the sheet against a small lowercase title band.

From the research on Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)

Mix them and make something Milanese Industrial Modernism Zagreb Modernist Graphics

yay!Milanese Industrial × Zagreb Modernist
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Zagreb Modernist Graphics, their arrangement from Milanese Industrial Modernism, the finish from Milanese Industrial Modernism. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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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.

Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri) Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)

Type from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
Colour from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
Form from Zagreb Modernist Graphics
Composition from Milanese Industrial Modernism
Surface from Milanese Industrial Modernism

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Zagreb Modernist Graphics

Yay!

Inter Tight, standing in for Lowercase neo-grotesque sans for titles and credits on Picelj's New Tendencies posters ('nove tendencije 2', 1963; 'nova tendencija 3', 1965; the five-language programme of 'tendencije 4', 1969)

Text · Milanese Industrial Modernism

The Milan-centred school that married Bauhaus- and Swiss-trained discipline with Italian painterly wit for enlightened industrial patrons such as Olivetti, Pirelli and La Rinascente. Studio Boggeri, Giovanni Pintori, Max Huber and Bob Noorda built posters, ads and signage from geometric primitives, numerals, transparent colour planes and photomontage on white grounds, held together by a house sensibility rather than a rulebook.

Inter; Milanese Industrial Modernism used Akzidenz-Grotesk and Semplicità

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Zagreb Modernist Graphics, with a counter-accent from Milanese Industrial Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri) Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)

  • #f1ede4 ground · 36%
  • #131313 ink · 14%
  • #f0c419 accent · 18%
  • #e2402a accent · 14%
  • #2a4a9c accent · 10%
  • #4a2c86 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1ede4;
  --ink: #131313;
  --accent-1: #f0c419;
  --accent-2: #e2402a;
  --accent-3: #2a4a9c;
  --accent-4: #4a2c86;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD): Picelj (died 2011), Arsovski (died 2020) and Bućan (died 2023) are recent and their posters remain in copyright, Arsovski's Teatar &TD logo is still in use, and Boris Ljubičić's 1979 circle symbol is the permanent emblem of the International Committee of the Mediterranean Games, so borrow the method (a multiplied unit, a lowercase credit line, a rebus title) rather than reproducing a particular poster or mark. Do not dress the style in red stars or party slogans as period decor: these designers worked for galleries and theatres in socialist Yugoslavia and deliberately avoided propaganda imagery.

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The two styles

An abstract geometric print with the words “più avanti” at upper left, a large yellow circle at upper right, and blue circles increasing in size from left to right. Red-orange, magenta, blue, and black wedges converge near the lower-left edge against an off-white background. 1933–1975 · Southern Europe Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri) The Milan-centred school that married Bauhaus- and Swiss-trained discipline with Italian painterly wit for enlightened industrial patrons such as Olivetti, Pirelli and La Rinascente. Studio Boggeri, Giovanni Pintori, Max Huber and Bob Noorda built posters, ads and signage from geometric primitives, numerals, transparent colour planes and photomontage on white grounds, held together by a house sensibility rather than a rulebook. A geometric poster features a tightly packed grid of circles split into red-orange, blue, black and cream halves, with occasional square corner fields. Large black lowercase lettering reading “krug” interrupts the pattern near the upper left. 1951–1975 · Southern Europe, Central Europe Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD) Zagreb graphic design grown from the EXAT 51 manifesto (1951), which tied abstract art to visual communication. Ivan Picelj's screenprinted posters for the Gallery of Contemporary Art and its New Tendencies shows (1961–1973) multiply one geometric unit or a few letters across the sheet, and Mihajlo Arsovski made letters, collage and quotation the identity of Teatar &TD. Later, Boris Ljubičić's Mediterranean Games circles (1979) kept to signs, while Boris Bućan's huge 1980s screenprints for Split's theatre borrowed Egyptian, Secession and Expressionist idioms around his own patterned figures.

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More combinations

With Milanese Industrial Modernism

With Zagreb Modernist Graphics

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