Style combination · Contrasts

Solidarność × Ukrainian Wartime Graphics

Both resist Moscow-backed power in their flag's colours, with a brand-like mark, stamps and ironic humour (the separate Orange Alternative's dwarfs; the warship stamp), but Solidarność was a union movement against its own state, drawn by hand and printed underground, while much of Ukraine's wartime graphics is a state's own brand at war; compare them to choose between a movement's sign and a nation's.

From the research on Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine)

Mix them and make something Solidarność Ukrainian Wartime Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Solidarność, their arrangement from Ukrainian Wartime Graphics, the finish from Solidarność. 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.

Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine)

Type from Solidarność: Hand-lettering
Tight setting
Colour from Ukrainian Wartime Graphics: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Solidarność: Folk & sacred symbols
Emblems & badges
Composition from Ukrainian Wartime Graphics: Single focal point
Isolated object
Surface from Solidarność: Flat

The type

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

Display · Solidarność

Wake

Londrina Solid, standing in for Red hand-drawn capitals on amateur posters of the 1989 election campaign, such as Chylak's 'Głosuj na Solidarność'

Text · Ukrainian Wartime Graphics

The graphics of Ukraine's defence since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, made by the state, the national post, agencies, illustrators and volunteers at home and abroad. Flat figures in the flag's blue and yellow are drawn to read at sticker and stamp size; sacred and official forms are recast with dark humour, from an icon Madonna cradling a Javelin missile to a soldier giving the finger to the cruiser Moskva on a postage stamp. Memes, merchandise and photographs under the trident turn morale into fundraising and a national brand of bravery.

Space Grotesk; Ukrainian Wartime Graphics used KTF Jermilov (Kyiv Type Foundry, 2021), a modular display face whose capitals are built from a few geometric elements on a 3 × 5 square grid, after the typographic practice of the Kharkiv avant-garde designer Vasyl Yermylov; used in Be Brave Like Ukraine and Yermylov Bold, made in 2018 for Banda's Ukraine NOW country brand and inspired by Yermylov's constructivist work

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Ukrainian Wartime Graphics, with a counter-accent from Solidarność. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine)

#f4f1e8 ground · 36%
#1c1c1c ink · 14%
#0057b7 accent · 18%
#d4161f accent · 14%
#c9a14a accent · 10%
#a5835c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1e8;
  --ink: #1c1c1c;
  --accent-1: #0057b7;
  --accent-2: #d4161f;
  --accent-3: #c9a14a;
  --accent-4: #a5835c;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Space Grotesk", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics: This is still a living, contested sign: the NSZZ Solidarność union claims the logo, and a Gdańsk court awarded it the copyright and barred Janiszewski from licensing it, a ruling the Warsaw Court of Appeal upheld (reported in November 2025), while Fydrych won a copyright case over his Orange Alternative dwarf against the city of Wrocław in 2014; do not reuse the logo, or a pastiche of it, for a brand or campaign as if it were public domain. The iconography also carries Catholic symbols and the memory of people killed under martial law and after it (the nine Wujek miners shot in December 1981; Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, murdered by security-service officers in October 1984). Solidaryca is still used for logos and slogans about Poland, freedom and democracy, its designer has criticised its exploitation by right-wing groups, and the union itself has grown increasingly aligned with Law and Justice, so do not use the cross, the candles or the lettering as decoration or to suggest an endorsement nobody gave.

Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine): This is the visual culture of a country under invasion, and most of it refers to real events and real people, among them the Snake Island border guards, the Moskva and the tractors that towed away abandoned Russian tanks, so use it to support Ukraine and its fundraisers, not as an edgy 'war' look for unrelated products. Saint Javelin is a charity brand run by Christian Borys, built on Chris Shaw's painting with his after-the-fact acceptance; lawyers for the soldier who spoke the warship line and for the Ukrainian military filed for an EU trademark on it in March 2022 against clothing firms that tried to register it; the stamps belong to Ukrposhta and the campaign to the state and Banda, so do not sell copies or close pastiches. The icon parodies put a weapon where the Christ child should be, and Borys defends them by the tradition of icons that comforted soldiers, but they can hurt believers, and even the murals have been contested (a trident halo on a Kyiv Saint Javelin mural was painted over), so do not put weapons into the sacred images of other faiths. Scholars such as Nadia Kaneva describe the Be Brave campaign as nation branding used as propaganda, so label state material as state material, and never present a generated image as a Ukrainian stamp, campaign poster or work of a Ukrainian artist.