Style combination · Contrasts
Mir iskusstva Book Art × Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
Lebedev's Leningrad books dropped the frame, the ornament and the fairy-tale past, floating a few flat planes on bare paper; set them side by side to decide between a bordered, retrospective page and an open, modern one.
Mix them and make something Mir iskusstva Book Art Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
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.
Mir iskusstva Book Art Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
- Type from Mir iskusstva Book Art
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Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book avoids ornamented display: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Colour from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
- Form from Mir iskusstva Book Art
- Composition from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
- Surface from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Mir iskusstva Book Art
Wow
Federant; Mir iskusstva Book Art used Ivan Bilibin's hand-drawn cover titles and illuminated initials in an Old Russian manner, drawn as part of the page and Typeset Cyrillic text in a single block inside an ornamental border, opened by an illuminated initial and closed by a tailpiece
Text · Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
Thin, large picture books made in Petrograd/Leningrad from 1922 to the mid-1930s for Raduga and the Gosizdat children's department led by Samuil Marshak, with Vladimir Lebedev as art editor. People, animals and machines are cut into flat, mostly unoutlined planes of a few bright lithographic inks and float on bare paper. Hand-drawn grotesque capitals frame the picture, and 'production books' show how things are made. Pravda's 1936 attack on 'artist-daubers' (khudozhniki-pachkuny) forced it towards naturalism, and in 1937 the Leningrad children's publishing house was broken up with arrests.
Inter; Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book used Heavy drawn Cyrillic block capitals and Grotesque capitals, one word diagonal
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book, with a counter-accent from Mir iskusstva Book Art. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Mir iskusstva Book Art Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
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#efe4c8ground · 36% -
#1c1a18ink · 14% -
#d23a24accent · 18% -
#c99a3aaccent · 14% -
#5b7bb5accent · 10% -
#8a9a68accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #efe4c8;
--ink: #1c1a18;
--accent-1: #d23a24;
--accent-2: #c99a3a;
--accent-3: #5b7bb5;
--accent-4: #8a9a68;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Mir iskusstva Book Art: This 'Russian' folk look is a refined, partly state-commissioned idiom of the imperial capital, assembled by professional artists from northern peasant crafts, lubki and icons: do not present it as timeless ethnic Russian folk art or as a neutral emblem of the Russian state, and keep icon-derived holy figures out of trivial uses. Its makers were not all Russian: Heorhiy Narbut, for example, became rector of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and designed the Ukrainian People's Republic's banknotes and stamps, so credit artists by their own identities. Benois (d. 1960) and Dobuzhinsky (d. 1957) remain in copyright in the EU and Russia (life plus 70 years, so at least until 2031 and 2028), while Bilibin (d. 1942), Somov (d. 1939) and Narbut (d. 1920) are in the public domain there: draw new borders, figures and lettering rather than reproducing their pages. Somov's Le Livre de la Marquise is explicitly erotic, above all the 1918 edition, so keep its plates out of children's or general-audience pastiche.
Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book: These books' makers were later persecuted: Vera Ermolaeva was arrested in 1934 and shot in a Karaganda camp in 1937, the Leningrad editorial office of the children's publishing house was broken up in 1937 with arrests, the poet Nikolai Oleinikov was shot that year, and Daniil Kharms died in a prison psychiatric ward in besieged Leningrad in 1942. Do not treat the idiom as cheerful Soviet nostalgia or propaganda pastiche. Its schematic types include racialised figures, such as Tsirk's Black violinist drawn as a solid black silhouette: simplify every figure with the same economy, and never use skin colour, hair or dress as an ethnic marker or joke. Lebedev (d. 1967) and Marshak (d. 1964) are still in copyright in Russia and the EU (life plus 70 years): draw your own figures and verses instead of reproducing their pages.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Mir iskusstva Book Art
- Vienna Secession Contrasts · Both enclose pictures in symmetrical frames, but Vienna squared the frame into grids and bars while the Russian book filled a wide border with folk and rococo motifs; pick geometric order or narrative ornament.
- Bezalel School Pairs well · In the same years both used Art Nouveau's ornamental frame to build a national book art from older ornament; set Bilibin's folk borders beside Raban's filigree frames to compare two revivals, or combine their framed, lettered pages.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Pairs well · Both draw an even black contour and fill it with flat colour; give a clear-line page Bilibin's ornamental border and headpiece for a storybook with a heritage frame.
- Russian Futurist Book Contrasts · Both drew on the lubok, but the Futurists kept its crude cut, rough paper and handwriting while the World of Art refined it into a polished, bordered ensemble; choose between raw and ennobled folk sources.
- Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering Pairs well · A parallel national revival of the same decades: both turned medieval and folk ornament into the borders and initials of a modern book; combine for a heritage storybook framed in old ornament.
- Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering) Pairs well · Bilibin's circle drew titles and initials in an Old Russian manner into bordered fairy-tale books; put a newly drawn vyaz title under a folk-ornament headpiece for a Russian Revival page rather than copying a liturgical heading.
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism) Pairs well · A parallel national revival of the same years: Bilibin framed Russian fairy tales in Old Russian borders as Munthe framed the sagas; combine for a northern storybook, but keep the Norse and Russian sources distinct.
- Armenian Manuscript Illumination Pairs well · Bilibin's circle turned medieval ornament into the borders and initials of a modern book; follow that route to use canon-table arcades as a frame for new text rather than copying a sacred page.
With Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Today's riso picture books share the few flat inks, bare paper and speckled texture; print a Lebedev-style sequence of floating figures in two or three riso inks.
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics Pairs well · Isotype counts with pictograms and the production book narrates with schematic workers and tools; combine them for explainers that show how something is made, step by step.
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · The naturalistic, modelled painting that displaced the idiom after 1936; set them side by side to choose between a schematic, playful picture of people and a heroic, illusionistic one.
- Russian Futurist Book Contrasts · The Futurist book crowds handwriting and crude drawing onto rough paper; the Leningrad picture book clears the page and lets a few flat planes float on it; choose between a dense handmade page and an airy, ordered one.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Clear line draws every contour in even black ink, while Lebedev mostly drew none and let abutting colour planes make the form; decide whether outline or plane carries the figure.
- Plakatstil / Sachplakat Pairs well · Both isolate one object on a plain ground in flat colour; give a Sachplakat-style single object Lebedev's schematic, playful geometry for packaging or posters aimed at children.
- Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry) Contrasts · Both explain the world to children in flat colour, but Lebedev's production books float a few large planes on bare paper while a Mizieliński atlas crowds the page with small figures and labels; decide between one clear object per page and a field to explore.
- Kultur-Lige & Yiddish Avant-Garde Book Design Contrasts · The Leningrad picture book that followed is in Russian, uses flat cut-paper figures floating on white and drops folk ornament; choose the Kultur-Lige page when letters and ornament must carry a culture's memory.