Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow The New Typography: Drop centering, set a left axis, divide areas with rules and space
- Type
- Set in The New Typography's manner (One sans in two weights, with hierarchy carried by size alone), and let Poetism's lettering (Constructivist grotesques mixed across playful sizes, letters allowed to behave as images) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in The New Typography's material (Black and red, halftone photography, plain rules, no ornament); bring in exactly one thing from Poetism (Two vivid inks, typically red with black or blue, on warm book paper).
- Colour
- Build on #eee9dc, #d22f26, #1e1d1a and admit one accent from #c4b6a3, #98493f, #000007.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- The New Typography When asymmetry becomes the aim in itself the reading order is never settled, and the page ends up harder to read than the ornamented one it replaced.
- Poetism Building the page with pure constructivist severity drops the lyric play between word and image, leaving engineering rather than a poem.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from The New Typography (layout, 1920s–1930s) and their accent from Poetism (style, 1923–1934). ## What to make Make the kind of thing The New Typography exists for: rebuilding letterheads and forms so they read in order without ornament, or fixing the hierarchy of headline, text and picture in a single decision. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from The New Typography - Asymmetry - Sans-serif type - Photography - Functional white space Composition: Drop centering, set a left axis, divide areas with rules and space. Type and lettering: One sans in two weights, with hierarchy carried by size alone. ## Accent comes from Poetism, used sparingly - Photomontage juxtaposed with type - Compositions of circles and diagonals - Two vivid, restricted colours - Typography as poetry Let one material quality come from it: Two vivid inks, typically red with black or blue, on warm book paper. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #eee9dc, carry the structure in #d22f26 and #1e1d1a, and let a single accent come from #98493f. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: trust, technique, exhilaration, intimacy. ## What goes wrong - The New Typography: When asymmetry becomes the aim in itself the reading order is never settled, and the page ends up harder to read than the ornamented one it replaced. - Poetism: Building the page with pure constructivist severity drops the lyric play between word and image, leaving engineering rather than a poem. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- The New Typography 1920s–1930s / Layout / Experimental Typography
Turned printed matter into rational information structure through asymmetry, sans-serifs, photography and functional hierarchy.
- Poetism 1923–1934 / Style / Avant-garde
The programme of the Czech avant-garde group Devětsil, extending poetry onto the page and into life itself. Its 'picture poems' combining photomontage with type, its compositions of circles and diagonals, and its vivid two-colour printing turned poetry books, magazines and posters into one continuous field of experiment.
Share this composition:https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=new-typography+poetism