Style combination · Pairs well
Risograph × Zagreb School of Animated Film
Riso's flat spot inks and speckled texture reproduce Zagreb's flat cut-out figures over a textured ground, which suits small-run posters, zines and picture books.
Mix them and make something Risograph Zagreb School of Animated Film
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 Zagreb School of Animated Film
- Type from Risograph
- Colour from Risograph
- Form from Zagreb School of Animated Film
- Composition from Zagreb School of Animated Film
- Surface from Risograph
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Risograph
Pop
Inter Tight, standing in for Neo-grotesques set large (e.g. Akzidenz-Grotesk, Helvetica)
Text · Zagreb School of Animated Film
The modernist animation of Zagreb Film's Studio for Animated Film, grown from reduced-animation advertisements of 1954-1955 and named the 'Zagreb school' by Georges Sadoul and André Martin after Cannes 1958. Breaking with Disney's full animation, caricaturists and painters, after UPA, Klee and the Suprematists, reduced characters to flat geometric caricatures with wiry limbs and cut the set to empty or textured painted fields, rows of identical figures and a few objects. Limited movement carried satirical, often dark fables of the 'small man' in mass society.
Jost; Zagreb School of Animated Film used Hand-drawn title lettering and Drawn monogram initial
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Risograph, with a counter-accent from Zagreb School of Animated Film. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Risograph & Indie Print Culture Zagreb School of Animated Film
-
#f4f1eaground · 36% -
#3255a4ink · 14% -
#ff48b0accent · 18% -
#eba93baccent · 14% -
#f15060accent · 10% -
#cc2a2eaccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f1ea;
--ink: #3255a4;
--accent-1: #ff48b0;
--accent-2: #eba93b;
--accent-3: #f15060;
--accent-4: #cc2a2e;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Zagreb School of Animated Film: The films and their characters remain in copyright and are distributed by Zagreb Film, whose logo is a horse: borrow the method (a flat caricature, an empty or textured field, a row of identical men), never a particular character, film or the horse logo, and never present a generated image as a Zagreb Film work. Made in a state-funded studio of socialist Yugoslavia, these films were, as historians read them, neither dissident nor propaganda: do not recast them as either, and do not dress a design in red stars, party slogans or leader portraits as period decor.
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 Zagreb School of Animated Film
- UPA & Cartoon Modern Contrasts · The nearest genome and its American parent: Zagreb's founders learned from UPA's flat caricatures, stripped sets and limited movement. But UPA lays its colour on one clean, flat field and pokes gentle fun at American folkways, while Zagreb sets its figures on tinted, often muted grounds of sponged, washed or canvas-textured paint, collages cut-out planes and photographs (even filmed children, in Igra), lines identical men up in rows against one small man, and turns the gag into an absurd, often dark fable of mass society.
- Polish Poster School Pairs well · Both built one absurd visual idea under state patronage in the same years; pair a Polish-style painted, hand-lettered metaphor with Zagreb's flat caricatures and empty fields for a film or festival poster.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Both draw flat, distorted figures, but Corporate Memphis is smooth, faceless and earnest on a clean field; Zagreb caricatures faces, roughens the ground and turns the figure into a satirical small man.
- Thaw Modernism (Soviet and Czechoslovak) Contrasts · Its Soviet and Czechoslovak contemporary shares the flat figures, the reduced set and work for animation, but prints clear pastels on a light ground in a mood of civic, Sputnik-age optimism. Zagreb sets its figures on tinted, often textured grounds and aims satire at technology, war and bureaucracy.
- Flash Vector Cartoon (Newgrounds-Era Web Animation) Contrasts · Textured, earthy, modernist art-house shorts against the even strokes, gradients and portal irreverence of Flash.
- Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio) Contrasts · Its contemporary among state-funded animation schools: both broke with Disney's full animation and staged short fables in flat figures and empty fields. Zagreb reduces its small men to geometric caricature for ironic satire of mass society; Shanghai takes its figures from ink painting, opera, paper-cut and murals and tells gentle fables and myths.
- Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD) Pairs well · The same city and years, with EXAT's Vlado Kristl and Aleksandar Srnec working on Zagreb Film cartoons; set a flat, satirical Zagreb-school figure against a grid of repeated units or letters for a festival poster.