Which of these work outside their subject?

Golden age travel, Festival of Britain and Japanese minimal all transfer to almost any event. Polish and DEFA transfer well to anything cultural. Yuefenpai, Taisho and ukiyo-e carry a strong cultural association, so use them where that association is true.

How do I avoid the poster looking like a pastiche?

Take the rules, not the subject. Use the Polish method of finding a metaphor, or the DEFA method of one idea in three inks, and apply it to your own content rather than reproducing a famous sheet.

Do image models handle non-Latin lettering?

Badly. Chinese and Japanese characters usually come back wrong. Ask for the vertical column as a compositional element, then set the real text yourself, or keep the title in Latin characters and use the layout alone.

Place and era

National and period styles, each with the rules that made it local.

Every one of these looks the way it does because of where and when it was printed: what the presses could do, what the censor allowed, what the audience already knew. That specificity is why they work. A Polish film poster and an American one from the same year advertise the same film and share nothing, and naming the country is what gets you the difference.

Films, and how different countries sold them

Four national film poster traditions. One had no photographs of the stars, one had no market, one had a painter, and one had a week to print.

Polish Poster School

A painted metaphor instead of the film: one strange image, hand lettering, and no stars.

East German DEFA

One bold flat graphic idea, hand-painted, on cheap paper with a limited ink budget.

German Expressionist Film Poster

Buildings that lean, shadows painted onto the walls, and a figure stretched out of shape.

Hong Kong Cinema Poster

A collage of painted faces and action, packed edge to edge, with huge Chinese characters.

Japan, three eras

The woodblock, the moment Japan met Art Deco, and the modern poster that empties the sheet.

Ukiyo-e Woodblock

Flat colour behind a black keyblock line, printed on absorbent paper with visible wood grain.

Taisho Modern

Japanese and Art Deco at once: a modern girl, flat colour, and vertical Deco lettering.

Japanese Minimal Poster

One quiet element, an enormous amount of empty space, and a vertical line of small type.

Places sold as places

Four styles invented to make somewhere look worth travelling to, eating in, or buying from.

Golden Age Travel Poster

One idealised view, flat airbrushed colour, and the place name in big clean capitals.

Neon Diner Americana

Glowing neon tubes against a night sky, with chrome, chequerboard and a hand-painted sign.

Festival of Britain

Spindly line drawing, molecular shapes and a cheerful postwar optimism about science.

Shanghai Calendar Poster

An airbrushed woman in a qipao, soft as a photograph, selling something in the corner.

Three national accents

An Italian typographic machine, a Brazilian collision of everything, and a Yugoslav line that refuses to be tidy.

Italian Futurist Typography

Futurism grown up and sold: mechanical letterforms built from blocks, in red and black.

Brazilian Tropicalia

Tropical colour, collage and psychedelia crashed together, deliberately and joyfully.

Zagreb School Animation

A wiry expressive line, flat washes that miss the edges, and a lot of bare paper.

Make one of them

Copy a prompt into an image model and pay for that one run. No subscription.

Open an image model

Other style groups

Graphic design movementsThe movements, and the wording that gets the look of each one.18 design movements Art movements as postersEach movement written as a poster the movement itself might have printed.21 art movements Print and reproduction looksThe printing processes, and the wording for what each does to ink.11 print processes Handmade and folkWays to make a poster that looks like a person made it, not a studio.9 handmade looks Propaganda and protestPolitical traditions, and the visual rules each used to move people.7 political traditions Music scenesThe scenes, and the graphic rules each used to say who a night was for.10 music scenes Screen and digitalThe looks that came from a screen, and the wording that gets each one.10 digital looks

Drawing and render stylesDrawing a character rather than printing a sheet? The same reference, for how a picture is made.

Because the constraints were local. Polish designers had no star photographs, East German studios had three inks, Hong Kong printers had a week and twenty actors to fit in. Those limits produced the look, so naming the place brings the limits with it.