Stylogenyin the style of Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)

Pictorial & machine age · 1960–1990 · Latin America & Caribbean

Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)

Also known as Cuban poster, Cartel cubano, Tricontinental posters

The poster culture of revolutionary Cuba, produced for the film institute ICAIC and the solidarity organisation OSPAAAL. With no commercial advertising and scarce materials, designers made bold silkscreen and offset posters that combined Pop and psychedelic colour, op-art pattern, flat silhouettes and single conceptual images, for cinema and for internationalist causes from Vietnam to Africa.

Make something in this styleGet advice in this styleMix it with another style

A colourful poster reads “PLANT TOGETHER” above a green seedling growing from dark soil held by several differently coloured hands. Red and yellow rays radiate behind a cream circular field containing the headline and plant.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Reduce the message to one emblematic image: a silhouette, a symbol or a conceptual visual pun.
  • Print flat, saturated layers in silkscreen and let bright, unexpected colour combinations carry the energy.
  • For film posters, interpret the film metaphorically rather than showing stills or stars.
  • Treat portraits and photographs as high-contrast silhouettes or posterised flat shapes.
  • Set solidarity slogans in a plain sans-serif and repeat them in several languages for international circulation.

Havana, Cuba (ICAIC film institute, OSPAAAL and state propaganda bodies)

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Naturalistic depiction, Straight photography, Abundant decoration, Horror vacui, Gloss & highlights, Blackletter

Palette

  • #f2ede0
  • #1c1c1c
  • #e3342b
  • #f5b81c
  • #d6337a
  • #2d8a57

Typefaces

  • Hand-cut silkscreen display lettering

  • Neo-grotesque sans captions repeated in Spanish, English, French and Arabic

    OSPAAAL

  • Psychedelic and op-art hand-drawn letterforms

    ICAIC film posters

Known for

  • OSPAAAL

    Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, founded 1966

  • ICAIC

    Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, founded 1959

  • Alfredo Rostgaard

    Hanoi, Martes 13, 1967

  • Elena Serrano

    Day of the Heroic Guerrilla, 1968

  • Eduardo Muñoz Bachs

  • René Azcuy

  • Antonio Fernández Reboiro

  • Tricontinental magazine

    from 1967

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleCuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)1960–1990 · Latin America & Caribbean

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Lincoln Cushing, ¡Revolución! Cuban Poster Art (2003)
  2. Richard Frick, OSPAAAL: The Tricontinental Solidarity Poster (2003)
  3. Georgetown University Library, 'Soy Cuba: The Art of the Film Poster in Cuba' (library.georgetown.edu)

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.