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Layout & composition · Free composition

Collage & layering

Overlapping fragments, cut-outs and stacked planes.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under layout & composition: how is the picture plane organised?

styles make it: 100
as a defining choice: 20
as a usual one: 39
now and then: 41
avoid it: 43

Styles defined by it 20

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

Cubist Pictorial Space1907–1925 · Western EuropeThe pictorial revolution of Picasso and Braque that shattered single-point perspective into overlapping, faceted planes seen from several viewpoints at once.
Dada1916–1924 · Central Europe, Western EuropeBorn in wartime Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 and spreading to Berlin, Hanover, Cologne and Paris, Dada used chance, absurdity and provocation against the culture that had produced the war.
Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil)1922–1938 · Central EuropeThe book and magazine design of the Czech Devětsil circle, where Karel Teige and his colleagues turned constructivist tools (asymmetry, sans and slab capitals, heavy bars, photomontage) toward Poetism's lyrical celebration of travel, cinema, jazz and the circus.
Mavo1923–1925 · East AsiaTokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925).
Surrealist Graphics1924–1960 · Western Europe, North AmericaLaunched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious.
Egyptian Painted Film Poster1932–1996 · Middle East & North AfricaThe painted publicity of Egyptian cinema from the early talkies to the 1990s, designed outside the studios by artist-printers such as Hassan Mazhar Gassour and printed as colour lithographs in Cairo.
Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster1940–1999 · South AsiaThe painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Situationist Détournement Graphics1956–1972 · Western Europe, Northern EuropeGraphics of the Letterist and Situationist Internationals (1956–1972), built on détournement: taking existing words and pictures (comic strips, advertisements, news photographs, city maps, classic texts) and turning them against their source.
Shōjo Manga (Japanese Girls' Comics)1958–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe look of Japan's girls' comics (strictly a readership, not a style), which Takahashi Macoto fixed in 1958 from the lyrical illustration (jojōga) of Nakahara Jun'ichi and the Year 24 Group remade in the 1970s.
Tropicália Graphic Design1964–1975 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphic language of Brazil's Tropicália, foreshadowed by Rogério Duarte's poster for Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964), which already devours Ulm modernism, and set by his 1968 covers for Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
Angura Theatre Poster1965–1985 · East AsiaThe posters of Japan's underground (angura) theatre from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, made for troupes such as Kara Jūrō's Jōkyō Gekijō and Terayama Shūji's Tenjō Sajiki.
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.
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.
Punk & DIY Zine1976–1986 · Western Europe, North AmericaThe graphic voice of punk rock in fanzines, record sleeves and gig flyers: images and words cut from newspapers, typed or scrawled, pasted down and run off on a photocopier.
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken)1977–1994 · Western EuropeAn anti-functionalist current in Dutch graphic design led by Studio Dumbar in The Hague (from 1977) and the Rotterdam collective Hard Werken (magazine from 1979, design office 1982–1994).
Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography1980–1998 · North AmericaGraduate-school experimentation, centred on Katherine and Michael McCoy's Cranbrook design programme, that applied post-structuralist literary theory to the page.
Nollywood Video Jacket & Film Poster1992–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe cover and poster art of Nigeria's home-video boom, from Living in Bondage (1992) on.
South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi)1995–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaA post-apartheid design language launched in Durban in 1995 by Garth Walker's Orange Juice Design and its free, experimental magazine Ijusi (isiZulu for 'juice'), which asked 'What makes me South African, and what does that look like?'.
Vaporwave2011–2017 · Global / networked, North AmericaAn internet-born microgenre and visual aesthetic that remixes the debris of late-20th-century consumer culture (Windows 95 dialogs, classical busts, palm trees, mall interiors, Japanese text, early 3D renders) in pastel pinks and cyans.
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.

Styles that often use it 39

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

Styles that use it now and then 41

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.

Photomontagein 58 of 100
Found & vernacular imageryin 58 of 100
Rebellious & subversivein 59 of 100
Eclectic mixingin 51 of 100
Ironic & self-awarein 45 of 100
Treated photographyin 43 of 100

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in layout & composition