Style combination · Pairs well

Pop Art Graphics × Screenprinted Gig

Shepard Fairey called Kozik 'the punk rock Warhol'; take Pop's appropriated cartoons and halftones and give them a gig poster's single idea and hand-lettered title.

From the research on Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster

Mix them and make something Pop Art Graphics Screenprinted Gig

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Screenprinted Gig, their arrangement from Screenprinted Gig, the finish from Pop Art Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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.

Pop Art Graphics Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster

Type from Screenprinted Gig: Hand-lettering
Ornamented display
Colour from Pop Art Graphics: Primary triad
Flat fields
Form from Screenprinted Gig: Stylised figuration
Restrained accents
Composition from Screenprinted Gig: Single focal point
Isolated object
Surface from Pop Art Graphics: Halftone & Ben-Day dots
Hard offset shadow

The type

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

Display · Screenprinted Gig

Fine

Londrina Solid; Screenprinted Gig used Hand-drawn display lettering by the poster artist, drawn into the image and Condensed sans-serif and wood-type-style capitals for the band, venue and date line

Text · Pop Art Graphics

Pop turned the commercial imagery of post-war consumer culture (comics, packaging, celebrity photographs and advertising) into both its subject and its method. Images are appropriated, enlarged, flattened and repeated; colour is bright and unmodulated; and the printing process itself, from Ben-Day dots to off-register silkscreen, is left visible as a sign of mass production.

Archivo; Pop Art Graphics used Comic-book hand lettering and Franklin Gothic

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Pop Art Graphics, with a counter-accent from Screenprinted Gig. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Pop Art Graphics Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster

#fbf8f0 ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#ffd400 accent · 18%
#f2b134 accent · 14%
#e10600 accent · 10%
#e2482f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbf8f0;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #ffd400;
  --accent-2: #f2b134;
  --accent-3: #e10600;
  --accent-4: #e2482f;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster: Film characters, logos and band names belong to their owners: Mondo's Star Wars and Marvel posters were made under licence from Lucasfilm and Disney, so clear the rights before printing a fan 'alt poster'; gig posters are the living trade of named independent printmakers, so commission or credit them rather than generating look-alikes of a recognisable artist's hand; and when you borrow the scene's sweet-and-sinister mix, keep the sinister half to monsters, skulls and noir rather than hate symbols or real atrocities: Kozik's own art drew on the iconography of Franco's fascist regime, under which he spent his earliest years in Spain, and that is not a costume to reuse.

The two styles

A retro comic-style woman with curled dark hair, a pink headscarf and red nails holds an open bottle of dark fizzy drink. Large yellow “ZING!” lettering fills the top above bright starbursts, bubbles and red, yellow and blue halftone textures.

1955–1975 · North America, Western Europe Pop Art Graphics Pop turned the commercial imagery of post-war consumer culture (comics, packaging, celebrity photographs and advertising) into both its subject and its method. Images are appropriated, enlarged, flattened and repeated; colour is bright and unmodulated; and the printing process itself, from Ben-Day dots to off-register silkscreen, is left visible as a sign of mass production.

A towering teal cactus bears a large cream-and-hot-pink flower whose lower petals form a skull face. A yellow disk, desert mesas and scattered stars sit behind it on a distressed black background, beneath tall pink lettering reading “NIGHTBLOOM.”

1991–present · North America, Western Europe, Global / networked Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster Hand-pulled, numbered screenprints that revived the rock poster in Austin from 1991, led by Frank Kozik, and spread via Flatstock fairs and, from 2004, Mondo to 'alternative' film posters, for collectors as much as the show. The gig posters lean to fluorescent inks, innocent cartoons in bizarre scenes and dense psychedelic layers; the film posters, often by the same artists, to Bass-like silhouettes or a whole cast on one sheet. A few flat inks, opaque or overprinting, sometimes metallic, carry hand-drawn lettering and usually one witty idea, sweet and sinister, nostalgic and knowing.

More combinations

With Pop Art Graphics

All 33 combinations with Pop Art Graphics

With Screenprinted Gig

All 12 combinations with Screenprinted Gig

Every style combination