Constructivist Red

Two inks was what a press could run quickly and cheaply, so the palette started as an economy and became a signature. It still reads as urgent because it reads as printed in a hurry.

Red against black is also the highest contrast available from one colour. The eye cannot ignore it, which is exactly what a poster on a wall needs.

Use one red, not two. A second red divides the emphasis and the whole effect depends on there being one.

Print on off-white. A pure white ground makes it look like a modern reproduction rather than paper.

Cut the shapes with hard diagonal edges. The palette and the geometry arrived together and each one looks wrong without the other.

Use it for a poster, a manifesto, a book cover, a record sleeve, anything that has to be read from across a room.

Leave it alone for a subject that needs nuance. Two inks can state a position and cannot hold a conversation.

Bauhaus primaries keeps three colours and stays neutral about all of them. This keeps one and points it at something.

Neutral plus one accent is the general case of the same move. Constructivist red fixes the accent as red, the neutral as black and the ground as paper.

Rodchenko built whole poster campaigns from one red, black and the paper, because that is what the press could do. El Lissitzky used the same two inks to argue geometry, and every protest sheet since has borrowed the pair.

A blue or a yellow slips in. Say one red and black only, with no second hue anywhere.

The red floods the frame and stops being an accent. Say it covers under a third of the picture.