Style combination · Contrasts
Risograph × Screenprinted Gig
Riso gives translucent soy inks and grain on small sheets; choose the screenprint for heavier ink, opaque where it must cover, on a large sheet that collectors frame, and riso for cheap, quick runs.
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.
Risograph & Indie Print Culture Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster
- Type from Screenprinted Gig
- Colour from Risograph
- Form from Screenprinted Gig
- Composition from Screenprinted Gig
- Surface from Risograph
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Screenprinted Gig
Hello
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 · Risograph
A contemporary culture of zines, art books, posters and prints made on Japanese Risograph stencil duplicators, whose soy-based spot inks (fluorescent pink, yellow, blue, teal) are laid down one drum at a time. Designers embrace the machine's limits: translucent overprints, slight misregistration, grainy coverage and coarse halftones give flat illustration and type a warm, handmade vibrancy at low cost.
Inter; Risograph used Neo-grotesques set large and Monospace and typewriter faces
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Risograph, with a counter-accent from Screenprinted Gig. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Risograph & Indie Print Culture Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster
-
#f4f1eaground · 36% -
#3255a4ink · 14% -
#ff48b0accent · 18% -
#f2b134accent · 14% -
#f15060accent · 10% -
#e2482faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f1ea;
--ink: #3255a4;
--accent-1: #ff48b0;
--accent-2: #f2b134;
--accent-3: #f15060;
--accent-4: #e2482f;
--font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
--font-text: "Inter", 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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Risograph
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Exact Pantone-matched corporate colour is the opposite of riso's drifting inks; use the contrast to signal independence.
- Neo-Swiss Revival Pairs well · Print neo-Swiss grids in two fluorescent riso inks to soften their rigour with grain and overprint.
- Y2K Futurism Contrasts · Glossy chrome renders are everything a riso cannot print; set frictionless screen gloss against tactile grain for deliberate friction.
- WPA Silkscreen Posters Pairs well · WPA silkscreen's flat, separated colour translates directly to riso drums; borrow its layered spot-colour scenes.
- Literatura de Cordel Woodcut Pairs well · Print a cordel-style woodcut on a riso in one ink on tinted stock to keep the pocket-chapbook economy for zines and poetry pamphlets.
- Cubist Pictorial Space Pairs well · Print synthetic-Cubist planes as overlapping flat riso inks so the overprints do the faceting for you.
- Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book Pairs well · Today's riso picture books share the few flat inks, bare paper and speckled texture; print a Lebedev-style sequence of floating figures in two or three riso inks.
- Die Neue Typographie Pairs well · Two-colour riso printing suits its black-plus-red restraint for low-budget editorial and posters.
With Screenprinted Gig
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · 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.
- Psychedelic Poster Pairs well · The 1960s Fillmore and Avalon posters are its ancestor; borrow one swelling, shape-filling title from them, but keep the band, date and venue line readable.
- Polish Poster School Pairs well · Both swap the star's photograph for one idea; add the Polish school's painted ambiguity to a flat screenprint when a film poster needs to unsettle rather than wink.
- Australian Poster Collective Screenprints Contrasts · Both hand-pull flat, hand-lettered screenprints from the same psychedelic root and both reach for fluoro inks; the Australian collectives printed for unions, marches and community causes (and some bands), often from photo stencils, and pasted them up at night, while the gig and alt-movie poster prints for one show, one film and a collector's wall, trading agitation for wit and nostalgia.
- American Mid-Century Modernism Pairs well · Saul Bass's film posters are a favourite model of the alternative movie poster (Film Comment found the Bass homages 'far too plentiful' in 2014); borrow his one cut-paper symbol that holds the whole story.
- WPA Silkscreen Posters Pairs well · Firewatch, the game Olly Moss art-directed, takes its look from National Park posters, and Killscreen (2014) likened its trailer to the Federal Art Project's 1930s national-park posters; give a fannish subject that calm public-service look and the wit shows.
- Bandung Distro Graphics Pairs well · Both screenprint scene-made graphics for bands; distro moves the print from paper onto cloth.
- Spotify Duotone Identity Pairs well · Add hand-lettered, flat-ink poster drawing to recall the gig-flier roots of the look.