Style combination · Contrasts
Plakatstil × Victorian Letterpress
Against a crowded multi-face bill, one object and one word show how much attention reduction can win.
Mix them and make something Plakatstil Victorian Letterpress
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.
Plakatstil / Sachplakat Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
- Type from Plakatstil
- Colour from Plakatstil
- Form from Victorian Letterpress
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Plakatstil avoids abundant decoration: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
- Composition from Plakatstil
- Surface from Victorian Letterpress
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Plakatstil
Act
Big Shoulders, standing in for Lucian Bernhard's hand-drawn block lettering
Text · Victorian Letterpress
The commercial jobbing print of the industrial century: posters, playbills, auction notices and ephemera built from a flood of new display types (fat faces, Egyptians, grotesques, Tuscans and condensed wood type). Lines are centred and each is set in a different face and size to fill the measure, framed in rules and stock borders and printed in black with one or two flat colours.
Zilla Slab; Victorian Letterpress used Fat face romans and Egyptian / Antique slab serifs
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Plakatstil, with a counter-accent from Victorian Letterpress. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Plakatstil / Sachplakat Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type
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#151515ground · 36% -
#efe5cfink · 14% -
#d2382baccent · 18% -
#e3b23caccent · 14% -
#24418faccent · 10% -
#2f5d3aaccent · 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: "Zilla Slab", serif;
}04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Plakatstil
- Corporate Identity Modernism Pairs well · Its brand-name-plus-object formula prefigures logo-led identity; pair it with a modernist grid for confident product campaigns.
- Flat Design Pairs well · Sachplakat is the ancestor of the flat product hero; borrow its single-object discipline to sharpen app and packaging graphics.
- Art Nouveau Contrasts · It was conceived against Jugendstil ornament; set a bare object poster beside a floral frame to dramatise clarity versus decoration.
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat) Contrasts · Its parent and nearest relative: Berlin's Sachplakat flattens the product into a silhouette in two to four flat colours with heavy block lettering, while Basel paints the same single object in full light and shadow, glass and tweed included. Choose Basel when the material of the product should sell it.
- Vietnamese Propaganda Poster (Tranh cổ động) Pairs well · Both reduce the message to one flat figure or object and hand-drawn words; use Plakatstil's plain ground to calm a busy red poster.
- Beggarstaffs Poster (Nicholson & Pryde) Pairs well · Bernhard and Hohlwein later made the flat silhouette and plain lettering a commercial system; Plakatstil is a later descendant, not a source.
- London Transport Design Contrasts · The Sachplakat reduced every poster to one object and a brand name, while Pick let each artist choose a different picture inside a fixed frame; use the contrast to decide between one formula and a curated plurality.
- Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich) Pairs well · The NDB places Heine's posters at the start of the new poster style: borrow the Sachplakat's single object and bold block lettering for a satirical poster that keeps Simplicissimus's flat silhouette and red-on-black.
With Victorian Letterpress
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Pairs well · Sign writers and type founders traded letterforms; add brushed shading and drop shadows to wood-type headlines for a street-made feel.
- Push Pin Style Pairs well · Push Pin revived Victorian display faces with irony; mix one wood-type headline with modern illustration for the same knowing nostalgia.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · One face, flush left and white space against a centred clamour of faces: use the contrast to test whether hierarchy needs variety at all.
- Arts & Crafts Movement Contrasts · Morris reacted against exactly this commercial clutter; set the two side by side to show craft restraint versus jobbing exuberance.
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design Contrasts · A Victorian mixed-face handbill is the clutter Ulm's one-family rule was meant to cure; use it as a before-and-after foil.
- Victorian Colour Toy Books (Evans, Crane, Caldecott and Greenaway) Contrasts · Its black-letter-dense, type-and-ornament jobbing page is the opposite of a picture-led page; combine them by hanging a wood-type title over a flat colour picture.
- Dada Pairs well · Raid Victorian wood type and stock ornaments as the Dadaists did, but scatter them instead of centring them.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.