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Tone & intent · Stance

Agitational & persuasive

Propaganda, protest and calls to action.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under tone & intent: what should the work make people feel or do?

styles make it: 114
as a defining choice: 44
as a usual one: 24
now and then: 46
avoid it: 13

Styles defined by it 44

For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)1850–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe company flags (frankaa) of the Fante asafo, the old warrior companies of Ghana's central coast, widely adopted from the mid-nineteenth century.
Hungarian Revolutionary Poster1912–1919 · Central EuropeThe political posters of Hungary's revolutions.
Russian Constructivism1917–1934 · Eastern EuropeConstructivism rejected art for art's sake in favour of the artist-engineer building useful things for the new Soviet society.
ROSTA Windows1919–1922 · Eastern EuropeHand-stencilled satirical news posters made by the Russian Telegraph Agency during the Civil War and hung in empty shop windows, first in Moscow, then in Petrograd and provincial towns.
Italian Fascist Graphics (Romanità & Exhibition Photomontage)1921–1943 · Southern EuropeThe visual language of Italian Fascism, which turned modernist means to a cult of Rome and of the Duce.
AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)1930–1938 · Central EuropeThe political photomontage John Heartfield made for the communist weekly AIZ from 1930 to 1938, in Berlin and, from 1933, in Prague exile.
Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement1931–1949 · East AsiaThe leftist print movement launched by Lu Xun's 1931 Shanghai woodcut workshop, which made the self-cut black-and-white woodcut China's art of national crisis and revolution.
Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster1932–1989 · Eastern Europe, Central Europe, East Asia, Southeast AsiaThe official art doctrine of the Soviet Union from 1932, later exported across the socialist world, which replaced avant-garde experiment with legible, heroic realism 'national in form, socialist in content'.
Spanish Civil War Poster1936–1939 · Southern EuropeThe poster war waged by the Spanish Republic, its unions and its anarchist, communist and socialist parties against Franco's uprising.
Taller de Gráfica Popular1937–1977 · Latin America & CaribbeanA Mexico City printmaking collective founded in 1937 around Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O'Higgins and Luis Arenal to put art at the service of popular and anti-fascist struggles.
Vietnamese Propaganda Poster (Tranh cổ động)1945–present · Southeast AsiaThe state poster art of Vietnam from the 1945 August Revolution to today.
Dazibao (Big-Character Posters)1957–1980 · East AsiaHandwritten wall posters in large brush characters that turned the walls of Mao-era China into a public forum for criticism, denunciation and, at the Democracy Wall, dissent.
Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)1960–1990 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe poster culture of revolutionary Cuba, produced for the film institute ICAIC and the solidarity organisation OSPAAAL.
Chicano Screenprint Poster1965–present · North AmericaThe screenprinted poster of the Chicano Movement and its heirs, made from the mid-1960s in community workshops across California and the Southwest for farmworker strikes and boycotts, teatro, dances, anti-war marches and immigrant rights.
Palestinian Resistance Poster1965–1993 · Middle East & North AfricaThe poster culture of the Palestinian national movement after 1965, issued by the PLO and its factions from Beirut and other Arab capitals for refugee camps, homes and solidarity audiences abroad.
Black Panther Party Graphics1967–1980 · North AmericaThe visual language of the Black Panther Party, created largely by its Minister of Culture, Emory Douglas, for the weekly newspaper The Black Panther.
Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics1967–1973 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphics of the Nueva Canción Chilena and Allende's Unidad Popular, 1967–1973.
Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)1968 · Western EuropeThe posters of the Atelier populaire, set up when students, teachers and artists occupied the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris on 14 May 1968, until police cleared the school on 27 June.
Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)1968 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphics of the 1968 Mexican student movement, made in days by brigades in the print workshops of San Carlos and La Esmeralda and in improvised school workshops.
Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters)1969–1975 · Latin America & CaribbeanPosters for the Peruvian military government's agrarian reform, made in Lima from 1969 by Jesús Ruiz Durand and colleagues at the state's reform publicity office.
Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective)1970–1990 · Western EuropeThe posters and identities of Grapus, a Paris collective founded in 1970 by Communist Party members who had met in the 1968 poster workshops.
Australian Poster Collective Screenprints1971–1994 · OceaniaScreenprinted posters from the political poster collectives and community workshops that spread across Australia from Sydney's Tin Sheds, where Earthworks began in 1971.
Afrobeat Sleeve Art1974–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe painted and collaged record covers of Nigerian Afrobeat, defined by Lemi Ghariokwu's sleeves for Fela Kuti from Alagbon Close (1974) onward.
Ethiopian Revolutionary Poster (Derg Era)1974–1991 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe poster and mural art of the Derg military government and its successor, Mengistu's People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1974–1991), made mostly by teachers and students of the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts.
Lebanese Civil War Party Poster1975–1990 · Middle East & North AfricaThe posters that some twenty parties and militias pasted on the walls of Beirut and other towns between 1975 and 1990, marking each quarter as one faction's territory.
Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988 · Middle East & North AfricaPosters, murals and stamps of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution and the 1980–88 war with Iraq, which fused the red-white-black international revolutionary poster with Persian miniature and coffeehouse narrative painting.
South African Resistance Poster1978–1994 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe posters of the struggle against apartheid, from the exiled Medu Art Ensemble in Gaborone to the community workshops that served the United Democratic Front and the unions in the 1980s.
Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics1980–1989 · Eastern EuropeThe graphic language of Poland's Solidarność movement, from the August 1980 shipyard strike to the semi-free election of 4 June 1989.
ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics1987–1995 · North AmericaThe graphics of New York's AIDS activist movement: the SILENCE=DEATH poster of 1987, a pink triangle above white capitals on black, and the posters, stickers, T-shirts, billboards and bus ads of Gran Fury (1988–1995), ACT UP's 'unofficial propaganda ministry'.
Indonesian Woodcut Activism (Taring Padi)1998–present · Southeast AsiaThe protest graphics of Taring Padi, the collective founded by students and activists in Yogyakarta in 1998 as Suharto fell, and of the punk and activist woodcut scenes around it.
Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)2006–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe street graphics of Oaxaca City since the 2006 teachers' strike and APPO uprising, when ASARO, the stencil collective Lapiztola and later workshops such as Colectivo Subterráneos made the colonial centre's walls a newspaper.
Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014 · Middle East & North AfricaThe street art of Egypt's 2011 revolution and the years after it, when Cairo's walls, above all around Tahrir and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became what Ammar Abo Bakr called a newspaper.
Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)2011–2024 · Middle East & North AfricaProtest graphics of the Syrian uprising from 2011, made to be photographed and shared online rather than to last on a wall.
Plain Tobacco Packaging2012–present · Oceania, Western Europe, Northern Europe, North America, Global / networkedA packaging language written into law to strip tobacco of persuasion.
Hong Kong Protest Art (Umbrella Movement to the 2019–20 Protests)2014–2020 · East AsiaThe graphics of Hong Kong's democracy protests, from the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the national security law of 2020, in two linked media.
Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave)2015–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphics of Latin America's feminist tide, a mass movement since Ni Una Menos (Buenos Aires, 3 June 2015) and the 2018 'marea verde' for legal abortion, though its scarf dates from 2003.
Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals)2016–present · Latin America & CaribbeanA state warning system stacked on commercial food packs.
Extinction Rebellion Graphics2018–present · Western Europe, Global / networkedThe visual identity of Extinction Rebellion, the climate movement founded in Stroud in 2018, built by its volunteer Art Group as a free kit anyone may print.
Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)2019–2022 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe street graphics of Chile's popular revolt, from 18 October 2019 to the March 2020 lockdowns, when a leaderless movement covered Santiago's Plaza de la Dignidad, the Alameda and other cities' walls.
Black Lives Matter Street Murals2020–present · North AmericaA single protest slogan painted along the roadway in capitals 20 to 35 feet tall, filling the street from kerb to kerb, so it reads whole only from rooftops, drones and helicopters.
Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics)2020–present · North America, Global / networkedThe text-led explainer slideshows that filled Instagram after George Floyd's murder in May 2020.
Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh Graphics2021–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedGraphics of Palestinian identity and of solidarity with Palestinians, made by Palestinian artists, the diaspora and supporters worldwide and shared mainly online, above all since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine)2022–present · Eastern Europe, Global / networkedThe graphics of Ukraine's defence since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, made by the state, the national post, agencies, illustrators and volunteers at home and abroad.
Woman, Life, Freedom Protest Graphics (Iran and the Diaspora)2022–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedPosters and digital graphics made in Iran and the diaspora after Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in morality-police custody in September 2022.

Styles that often use it 24

A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.

Styles that use it now and then 46

An occasional choice in these styles.

It often goes with

Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.

Communal & popularin 86 of 114
Rebellious & subversivein 62 of 114
All capsin 78 of 114
Naturalistic depictionin 66 of 114
Emblems & badgesin 70 of 114
Extreme scale contrastin 73 of 114

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in tone & intent