Form & shape · Curvilinear
Biomorphic curves
Soft, cell-like, plant-like forms.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under form & shape: what is the shape language?
- styles make it
- 104
- as a defining choice
- 7
- as a usual one
- 62
- now and then
- 35
- avoid it
- 5
Styles defined by it 7
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
- Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori DesignToi Māori, the visual arts of the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, of which kōwhaiwhai, the painted scroll patterns of paddles and meeting-house rafters, is the most graphic strand.
Styles that often use it 62
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
- Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)The family of Arabic scripts of al-Andalus and North Africa, descended from early Kufic bookhands.
- Persian Nastaʿlīq Calligraphy (Qiṭʿa, Chalipa and Siyāh-mashq)The 'hanging' script of Persian poetry and an art of the single sheet.
- Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)The visual language of Javanese shadow puppets: flat figures cut from buffalo parchment, with head and legs in profile, shoulders turned to the front and long jointed arms worked by horn rods.
- Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)Pictorial writing in which the strokes of a devotional text form one figure: a lion of ʿAli built from the Nad-e ʿAli prayer, a galleon whose hull spells the names of the Seven Sleepers, a peacock, a Sufi cap.
- Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)A kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting.
- Northwest Coast Formline DesignThe two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast nations, painted, carved and woven onto boxes, house fronts, robes and hats, and printed as serigraphs since the 1960s.
- Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar PrintsThe bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs.
- African Wax & Fancy PrintIndustrially printed cotton made for West and Central African markets, first by Dutch and British mills that imitated Javanese batik with resin resist, and later by African mills.
- Glasgow StyleGlasgow's distinctive answer to Art Nouveau, formed around Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret and Frances Macdonald and Herbert MacNair at the Glasgow School of Art.
- Guna MolaThe reverse-appliqué blouse panels of Guna women in Panama, made by cutting through two to seven stacked layers of cotton so that every shape is ringed by echoing bands of the colours beneath.
- Bezalel SchoolThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
- Taishō Roman & Lyrical IllustrationThe lyrical illustration (jojōga) of late-Meiji to early-Shōwa Japan, led by Takehisa Yumeji: willowy, large-eyed women in kimono drawn with an Art Nouveau contour, set among camellias and kimono patterns and lettered by hand.
- Hurufiyya Calligraphic ModernismA pan-Arab and Iranian modern-art movement, begun by Madiha Omar in the late 1940s, that freed the letters of the Arabic script from text and used them as abstract visual units.
- Casablanca School Graphic ModernismA postcolonial modernism formed at the Casablanca fine-art school under Farid Belkahia, where Mohamed Melehi, Mohammed Chabâa and colleagues set Amazigh rugs and jewellery, painted ceilings and calligraphy beside a Bauhaus-style merging of art, craft and design.
- Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)Painting on paper and canvas by Pardhan Gond artists of Patangarh and Bhopal, begun when Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, recruited Jangarh Singh Shyam in 1981; the style was later named Jangarh Kalam after him.
- Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)One fixed page for the Qur'an across much of the Muslim world: Uthman Taha's fully vowelled Naskh in fifteen justified lines, written so that every page ends at the end of a verse (the late Ottoman âyet-berkenar layout), inside a floral frame, with sura titles in framed cartouches and verse numbers in small round medallions.
- Black Metal GraphicsThe visual language of black metal, fixed by Norway's second wave in the early 1990s, now worldwide, since the 2010s borrowed by mainstream acts (Szpajdel's Rihanna and Metallica logos, 2016).
- Frutiger AeroThe glossy, optimistic look of consumer technology from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, retrospectively named in 2017 by the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute after Windows Vista's Aero interface and Adrian Frutiger's humanist sans.
- 'Good Morning' Greeting Images (WhatsApp Forward Vernacular)The ready-made greeting pictures that millions of smartphone users, many of them older and new to the internet, forward to family, friends and groups each morning on WhatsApp, above all in India and Brazil.
- Woman, Life, Freedom Protest Graphics (Iran and the Diaspora)Posters and digital graphics made in Iran and the diaspora after Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in morality-police custody in September 2022.
Styles that use it now and then 35
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Armenian Manuscript Illuminationc. 862–1800
- Hebrew Micrographyc. 895–present
- Nianhua & Chinese Folk Printc. 1100–present
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphyc. 1324–present
- Đông Hồ & Hàng Trống Folk Prints1600–present
- Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design1700–present
- Urdu Katib Lithography1837–present
- Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering1861–1951
- Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)1880–1922
- German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)1895–1933
- Vienna Secession1897–1918
- Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk1912–present
- Dada1916–1924
- Mavo1923–1925
- Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art1925–1940
- Scandinavian Functionalism1930–present
- Bengali Modernist Book Cover (Prachchhad)1943–present
- UPA & Cartoon Modern1944–1960
- Polish Poster School1950–1990
- Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design1952–1990
- Situationist Détournement Graphics1956–1972
- Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design1959–2000
- Rorke's Drift Linocut1962–1982
- Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism1966–1999
- Warli Painting1970–present
- Western Desert Iconography1971–present
- Rave & Acid House Graphics1988–2000
- Torres Strait Islander Linocut1991–present
- Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China')2003–present
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism2012–2022
- Extinction Rebellion Graphics2018–present
- Guochao (China-Chic National Trend)2018–present
- Claymorphism & Soft 3D2020–present
- Generative-AI Image Aesthetic2022–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Floral & vegetalin 59 of 104
- Pattern & repeatin 54 of 104
- Abundant decorationin 50 of 104
- Spiritual & sacredin 57 of 104
- Organic flowin 29 of 104
- Jewel & metallicin 34 of 104
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.