Style combination · Contrasts
Syrian Revolution Graphics × Ukrainian Wartime Graphics
Both were made for the feed in wartime and answer violence with irony, but the Syrian posters came from an unsponsored, pseudonymous collective facing its own regime, while Ukraine's national post and president's office commission and sign theirs; the comparison shows what state backing does to protest graphics.
Mix them and make something Syrian Revolution Graphics Ukrainian Wartime Graphics
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.
Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives) Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine)
- Type from Syrian Revolution Graphics
- Colour from Ukrainian Wartime Graphics
- Form from Ukrainian Wartime Graphics
- Composition from Syrian Revolution Graphics
- Surface from Syrian Revolution Graphics
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Syrian Revolution Graphics
Now!
Rakkas, standing in for Freely brushed Arabic calligraphy for one- or two-word slogans, composed for each poster rather than typed in a stock font; one member said he sometimes spent two days designing a single word such as 'freedom' or 'revolution', and that some pieces drew on Persian calligraphy (Al-Safir interview, 2012)
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
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Ukrainian Wartime Graphics, with a counter-accent from Syrian Revolution Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives) Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine)
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#f4f1e8ground · 36% -
#1c1c1cink · 14% -
#0057b7accent · 18% -
#c8102eaccent · 14% -
#c9a14aaccent · 10% -
#4b5320accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4f1e8;
--ink: #1c1c1c;
--accent-1: #0057b7;
--accent-2: #c8102e;
--accent-3: #c9a14a;
--accent-4: #4b5320;
--font-display: "Rakkas", cursive;
--font-text: "Space Grotesk", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives): These graphics come from an uprising met with massacres, sieges, detention and disappearance, and their makers worked under pseudonyms at real risk: Raed Fares and Hamoud Junaid were shot dead in Kafranbel on 23 November 2018 (local activists blamed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which did not claim it), and the collective signed only with its own name, so never attribute a poster to an individual member or expose anyone who made this work. The martyr, siege, bread and Hama motifs refer to real massacres and real dead, not to an edgy 'war poster' look. The collective's posters were released under Creative Commons BY-NC, so do not use them or close pastiches commercially, and credit the collective, Kafranbel and the Creative Memory archive. The three-star flag has been the state flag since the HTS-dominated caretaker government took it up after Assad's fall, so using it, or Kafranbel's banners, as generic 'Syria' branding can imply an alignment their makers never gave. Have every Arabic line read by a fluent reader, never fill a design with pseudo-Arabic, do not mock the broken English of some banners, which was written to be understood abroad, and never present a generated image as a work of the uprising.
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.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Syrian Revolution Graphics
- Lebanese Civil War Party Poster Contrasts · Party-branded martyr obituaries with emblems and leaders against irreverent sheets, signed only by a town or a collective, that answer one leader's cult; the contrast shows what a poster without a party looks like.
- Arabic Calligraffiti Pairs well · Scale a brushed slogan from the poster up to a wall with calligraffiti's architectural sweep, keeping the words short and checked by a fluent reader.
- Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics Contrasts · Both made hand-lettered protest banners and cheap copies and answered force with irony, but Solidarność gathered under one logotype and a union, where these sheets were signed only by a town or a collective, bilingual and made for the feed; set them side by side to weigh one shared mark against many local, dated voices.
- Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals) Pairs well · Its 2011 neighbour: Cairo painted martyrs and friezes onto walls, Syria made portable sheets for the camera; put a Syrian-style printable slogan beside a mural photograph to join wall and feed.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster) Pairs well · Both are anonymous collectives that argue out one figure and one punning slogan together; borrow May '68's single flat ink for a Syrian poster that must print cheaply.
With Ukrainian Wartime Graphics
- Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics Contrasts · 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.
- Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular Pairs well · NAFO's Fellas come from the Doge meme and the image-macro habit of pasting a character into a photo; pair a rough meme edit with a clean flat vector figure for a quick reply to the day's news.
- Russian Constructivism Pairs well · The campaign lettering quotes Vasyl Yermylov of the Kharkiv avant-garde, which the atlas's Russian Constructivism entry absorbs without naming him and Ukrainian designers reclaim as their own; the link runs through one campaign's typeface, not the composition. Add constructivism's diagonals and heavy bars to a blue-and-yellow slogan for urgent information posters.
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC) Pairs well · Both reduce a cause to one flat figure in a few colours on a plain ground; borrow the Cuban poster's screen-printed colour clash and op-art pattern to scale a blue-and-yellow sticker image up to a full poster.
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · Soviet posters idealised soldiers and leaders in heroic painted realism; Ukraine's wartime images keep morale up with flat figures and jokes instead. Set them side by side to choose between idealisation and irony, and mind that the Soviet style belongs to the past Ukraine is removing from its streets.
- Narbut School (Ukrainian Baroque Revival Graphics) Pairs well · A later revival (2022 onward) that draws on Ukrainian national imagery; not an influence on Narbut.