ALBERTO KORDA’S 1960 photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara has become shorthand for revolutionary iconography. But, as Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics reveals, there is much more to Cuban graphic design than the implacable face of Che.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the Havana-based Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL) was home to a team of designers creating bold posters that championed the liberation struggles of the global South and condemned the actions of Cuba’s looming neighbour to the north.

Unlike the muscular socialist realist propaganda of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s designers applied their pre-revolutionary experience working in commercial advertising to creating what OSPAAAL creative director Alfredo Rostgaard called the “anti-ad.”