Between the 1960s and 1990s, more than fifty designers worked at OSPAAAL. Based in Cuba, they made magazines and posters that were sent around the world. Their aim was to promote radical political ideas. Many of their posters celebrate socialist revolutions and liberation movements from the Global South.

Many OSPAAAL designers combined images of Indigenous art and craft with weaponry. Their aim was to argue for the right to self-determination and support liberation movements opposing colonial and imperial powers. However, the designers did not always know the meaning or origin of the iconography they used.