Flat colour, full length, no apology

Two figures, full length, standing back to back in flared coats. Behind them, flat blocks of colour with no shading at all. Above, fat rounded letters that lean.

There's no painting here and no photograph. It's shapes, and the shapes are extremely sure of themselves.

What defines the style?

Full-length figures, flat colour, and lettering with weight.

Seventies American genre posters of this school abandoned the painted portrait entirely: whole bodies rendered as silhouettes or near-silhouettes, dropped onto solid colour fields, with display type that has the same density as the figures. Nothing recedes, nothing is shaded, everything is foreground.

It's closer to a screen-printed concert poster than to the painted traditions elsewhere in this bucket, and that difference is exactly what makes it translate onto cotton without any adaptation.

Why full length rather than a face?

Because the clothes and the stance were the point.

A face says who. A full figure says how somebody carries themselves — the coat, the boots, the angle of the shoulders, the fact that they're not moving. The posture is doing the characterisation and it does it at any size, which a face doesn't.

Two figures back to back is the strongest version of it: a whole relationship encoded in body language, with nobody's likeness involved.

What's happening with the lettering?

It's the same weight as the artwork, which is unusual.

Fat rounded funk display letters, tightly packed, often on a slight angle or curve, sized so the title has as much visual mass as the figures. Most poster traditions subordinate the type. This one lets it compete, and the tension between the two is the composition.

If the type feels too big, it's probably about right — type this heavy is a graphic, not a caption.

Can I use a real film's artwork?

The posters and the films both belong to somebody.

These titles are catalogued, restored and licensed; the poster artists are known and credited; and the leads are people whose likenesses are their own. A famous silhouette from a famous one-sheet is still that artist's drawing.

The tradition itself — flat figures, blocked colour, funk lettering — is a design language, and design languages don't have owners. Style is public, work is private.

What's a good subject that isn't a film?

Anybody who has a stance.

A band. Two friends who always stand like that. A grandmother in her going-out coat. A pair of colleagues. The style flatters posture more than features, so it works on people who'd hate a portrait.

Set their names as the "cast" line and it becomes a poster for a life rather than a film — which is the version worth making.

What palette?

Three flat colours that argue slightly.

Deep purple with burnt orange and cream. Mustard with oxblood. Bottle green with hot pink. The period's palettes were warm, saturated and just short of clashing, and the flatness means every colour has to earn its place because there's no shading to hide behind.

Two inks works. Three is the ceiling before it stops being a poster and starts being a print.

Does it print well?

Better than almost anything else in this bucket.

Flat silhouettes with hard edges and no gradients is the friendliest artwork a fabric print can receive. Nothing fills in, nothing goes grey, and it reads from across a street. The lettering is heavy by definition.

The only thing to watch is silhouette legibility: figures need clear gaps between limbs and torso, or the shape collapses into a blob at small size.

How do I get one made?

Describe it at JustOG — who's standing there, what they're wearing, and what the title says. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

No shading, no perspective, no doubt.