Stylogenyin the style of WPA Silkscreen Posters

Pictorial & machine age · 1935–1943 · North America

WPA Silkscreen Posters

Also known as Federal Art Project posters, New Deal posters

Posters made by the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration to promote health campaigns, education, theatre, travel and the national parks during the Depression. Unemployed artists adapted commercial silkscreen to print runs by hand, which gave the work its flat, opaque layered colour, simplified stylised forms and clear geometric lettering in a public-service voice.

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A stylised hiker with a large backpack stands on an orange rocky overlook above a winding river, evergreen forests and blue mountains. An orange sun sits behind the peaks, and large blue lettering across the top reads “EXPLORE.”
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Build the image from a few opaque, flat silkscreen layers, each colour a separate hand-cut stencil.
  • Simplify figures, landscapes and objects into bold, stylised masses with clean edges.
  • Pair one central image with a short message in clear, often geometric sans-serif capitals.
  • Keep the palette restrained and slightly muted: earth tones and slate blues with one warm accent.
  • Address the public directly and constructively: inform, encourage and invite rather than sell.

Federal Art Project poster divisions, New York City and other US cities

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
Abundant decoration, Horror vacui, Blackletter, Eclectic mixing, Whiplash line, Luxurious & glamorous

Palette

  • #efe6cf
  • #222222
  • #3d5a7a
  • #c8622d
  • #d9a441
  • #6f7a45

Typefaces

  • Hand-cut stencil lettering in geometric sans-serif capitals

  • Futura (Paul Renner, 1927) and similar geometric sans-serifs

  • Condensed gothic poster capitals

Known for

  • WPA Federal Art Project Poster Division, New York City

  • Richard Floethe

    art director, New York City poster division, 1936–1939

  • Anthony Velonis

    introduced silkscreen printing to the poster division

  • Federal Theatre Project posters

  • WPA posters for the National Park Service

  • Library of Congress, 'By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936–1943'

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from WPA Silkscreen Posters’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 styleWPA Silkscreen Posters1935–1943 · North America

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. Library of Congress, 'Posters: WPA Posters' collection (loc.gov/pictures/collection/wpapos/)
  2. Christopher DeNoon, Posters of the WPA (1987)
  3. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

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