Style combination · Contrasts
West German Conceptual Film × International Typographic Style
Shares the set grotesque, flat inks and ornament-free ground, but rejects Swiss objectivity: each poster carries one visual metaphor and a new typographic choice per film instead of a grid and a neutral system.
Mix them and make something West German Conceptual Film International Typographic Style
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.
West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow) International Typographic Style
- Type from International Typographic Style
- Colour from International Typographic Style
- Form from West German Conceptual Film
- Composition from West German Conceptual Film
- Surface from West German Conceptual Film
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · West German Conceptual Film
The art-film and culture poster Hans Hillmann developed from 1953 for the West German distributors Neue Filmkunst and Atlas Film, which his Kassel student Gunter Rambow took with Gerhard Lienemeyer into staged photo posters for theatre, publishers and protest. Instead of star portraits, each poster reduces a film or play to one sign taken from its content, a silhouette, a cropped grainy photograph or a photographed paradox, mostly in black and one or two flat inks (Rambow's staged objects also in full colour), with a set grotesque and small flush credits.
Inter; West German Conceptual Film used Condensed bold grotesque for titles, set tight and often stacked and Neo-grotesque roman and italic for credits in small flush or columned blocks
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from International Typographic Style, with a counter-accent from West German Conceptual Film. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow) International Typographic Style
-
#f2f0e9ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#e1251baccent · 18% -
#1f4e9caccent · 14% -
#e3d34eaccent · 10% -
#7a7a7aaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f2f0e9;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #e1251b;
--accent-2: #1f4e9c;
--accent-3: #e3d34e;
--accent-4: #7a7a7a;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow): Some posters turn Nazi imagery against itself: a swastika of broken pencils over the 1938 member list of the exiled German PEN (P.E.N. im Exil, 1983) and an egg given Hitler's forelock and moustache (Sein oder Nichtsein, 1964). Displaying Nazi symbols is restricted by law in Germany and several other countries outside contexts such as art, satire, education and history, so keep any such sign unmistakably critical and check the rules where the work will be shown. Rambow's Othello poster (1978) appears to show a face in dark stage make-up, the blackface convention for the role that is now widely rejected: do not borrow it. The posters and their photographs (Hillmann, Rambow, Lienemeyer, van de Sand, Abisag Tüllmann) are in copyright: stage and photograph your own object or cut your own silhouette instead of recreating a poster.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With West German Conceptual Film
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) Contrasts · Both isolate one object on a plain ground, but Basel paints a product in glossy lithographic realism to sell it; here the object stands for a film's theme, is cut to a flat silhouette or a grainy photograph, and rarely flatters.
- AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield) Pairs well · Heartfield tied four bloody axes into a swastika in 1934; Rambow's broken pencils laid into a swastika over a 1938 PEN list (1983) make the same move of an object turned into an emblem. Borrow the AIZ caption when the poster must accuse, and Rambow's wordless object when it should commemorate.
- Polish Poster School Contrasts · Its contemporary in art-film posters: the Polish school paints the metaphor and letters the title by hand in loose brushwork; take the Kassel route when the same single idea should come from a cropped photograph or a hard silhouette with set grotesque type.
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Pairs well · Hipgnosis also builds impossible scenes for the camera and lets the photograph vouch for them; add Rambow's plain ground and one line of set grotesque when such a staged photo has to work as a street poster rather than a record sleeve.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Contrasts · The ICAIC film posters of revolutionary Cuba also read a film metaphorically and reduce it to one silhouette or visual pun in screenprint, but they let flat, saturated, Pop and psychedelic colour carry the energy and draw or hand-cut the title letters; the Kassel poster mostly keeps to black and one or two inks, a photograph or a hard silhouette and set grotesque type.
- French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan) Contrasts · Savignac's visual gag is drawn and painted to make people smile at a product; the Kassel poster finds its pun in photographs and silhouettes, and its humour is darker and aimed at a film's or play's subject.
- Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics Contrasts · Hillmann's posters also refuse star portraits and reduce a film to one sign, but they are static sheets set in grotesque type that often find the sign in a grainy photograph; Bass draws and cuts the sign by hand and builds it as a moving title before it becomes a poster.
- Israeli Political Poster (Tartakover to Lemel) Contrasts · Both can concentrate a poster into a photographed paradox and a set sans-serif title; choose the Israeli dissenting core when Hebrew slogans, national visual memory and the artist as critical witness must carry the argument, rather than a sign extracted from a film or play. Lemel's exhibition and pandemic images remain points of overlap, not a uniquely Israeli photographic technique.
With International Typographic Style
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · Ornamental curves against an orthogonal grid make a strong deliberate tension.
- Brutalist Web Design Pairs well · Strip the grid to raw HTML defaults to get a rawer, contemporary take on Swiss honesty.
- Psychedelic Poster Contrasts · Its exact opposite on legibility; borrow one swirling element to break a too-cold Swiss layout.
- Japanese Postwar Modernism Pairs well · Add Japanese restraint and emblematic colour fields to the grid for warmth without losing order.
- American Traditional Tattoo Flash Contrasts · Rational grid and sans-serif against sentimental, hand-lettered emblems: one flash motif on a Swiss layout makes a sharp contrast.
- Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics Contrasts · Put a single tag or throw-up over a strict Swiss grid to stage the clash between institutional order and a street voice.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Set one loud appropriated Pop image inside a strict grid with a neutral grotesque so the irony reads as deliberate rather than chaotic.
- Italian Painted Film Poster (Rome Studios) Contrasts · Grid, restraint and photographic objectivity are the opposite of a crowded painted montage.