Style combination · Contrasts

Polish Information Picture Book × Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

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.

From the research on Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry)

Mix them and make something Polish Information Picture Book Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

A densely illustrated poster headed “TOGETHER OUTSIDE” shows people gardening, cycling, hiking, swimming, playing basketball, reading and sharing food among trees, flowers, buildings and ponds. Red, yellow, blue and black illustrations cover a textured cream background. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Polish Information Picture Book, the form from Polish Information Picture Book, the composition from Polish Information Picture Book. Not a real or historical work.

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.

Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry) Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

Type from Polish Information Picture Book: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book: Flat fields
Limited spot colours
Form from Polish Information Picture Book: Stylised figuration
Pictogram
Composition from Polish Information Picture Book: All-over field
Horror vacui

Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book avoids horror vacui: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
Surface from Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book: Grain & noise

The type

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

Display · Polish Information Picture Book

Hello

Londrina Solid; Polish Information Picture Book used Mrs White and Cartographer

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

The colours

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

Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry) Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book

#efe4c8 ground · 36%
#1c1a18 ink · 14%
#d23a24 accent · 18%
#e7b941 accent · 14%
#e0876a accent · 10%
#5b7bb5 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe4c8;
  --ink: #1c1a18;
  --accent-1: #d23a24;
  --accent-2: #e7b941;
  --accent-3: #e0876a;
  --accent-4: #5b7bb5;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry): The leading authors are living, named illustrators whose books are in copyright, so draw your own figures, maps and lettering instead of asking an image model for the Mizielińskis', Bajtlik's or Karski's hand, and never present a generated spread as a page from Mapy, Mamoko or another Dwie Siostry book. Picture atlases sum up whole countries in a few small figures: show people through what they do, make and celebrate, ask people from a country to check its spread, and avoid reducing a culture to costume, cliché or skin colour.

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.