Stylogeny combining Plakatstil × Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

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Style combination · Pairs well

Plakatstil × Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

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.

From the research on Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

Mix them and make something Plakatstil Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

YAY!Plakatstil × Leningrad Avant-Garde1905 · 1922
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book, their arrangement from Plakatstil, the finish from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book. 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.

Plakatstil / Sachplakat Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

Type from Plakatstil
Colour from Plakatstil
Form from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book
Composition from Plakatstil
Surface from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

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The type

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

Display · Plakatstil

Yay!

Big Shoulders, standing in for Lucian Bernhard's hand-drawn block lettering

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

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The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Plakatstil, with a counter-accent from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Plakatstil / Sachplakat Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

  • #151515 ground · 36%
  • #efe5cf ink · 14%
  • #d2382b accent · 18%
  • #e3b23c accent · 14%
  • #24418f accent · 10%
  • #2f5d3a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #151515;
  --ink: #efe5cf;
  --accent-1: #d2382b;
  --accent-2: #e3b23c;
  --accent-3: #24418f;
  --accent-4: #2f5d3a;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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.

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The two styles

A tall, slender red-orange dog stands facing right against a black background, with angular black cutouts defining its features and limbs. Large cream capital letters spell “VELOX” beneath its paws. 1905–1920 · Central Europe Plakatstil / Sachplakat The German 'object poster' launched by Lucian Bernhard's Priester match poster and printed by Berlin's Hollerbaum & Schmidt. It strips the advertisement to a single product rendered in flat, saturated colour and the brand name in bold hand-drawn letters on a plain ground, so the message registers instantly from a passing tram or across the street. A stylised yellow dog with black patches, a blue collar and a red tongue bounds toward the right on a cream background. Huge red Cyrillic lettering reading “БЕГИ!” rises diagonally above it, with speckled print texture throughout. 1922–1936 · Eastern Europe 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.

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