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Form & shape · Representation

Distortion & exaggeration

Elongated, warped or grotesque figures.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under form & shape: what is the shape language?

styles make it: 107
as a defining choice: 15
as a usual one: 49
now and then: 43
avoid it: 7

Styles defined by it 15

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

Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)1500–present · Southeast AsiaThe 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.
Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)1880–1917 · Latin America & CaribbeanCheap broadsheets, chapbooks and gazettes sold on the streets of Porfirian Mexico City by the publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and illustrated by Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada.
Glasgow Style1890–1914 · Western EuropeGlasgow's distinctive answer to Art Nouveau, formed around Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret and Frances Macdonald and Herbert MacNair at the Glasgow School of Art.
Simplicissimus Satirical Style (Munich)1896–1944 · Central EuropeThe house style of the Munich satirical weekly Simplicissimus, set by Th.
Expressionist Woodcut Graphics1905–1925 · Central Europe, Western EuropeThe graphic arm of German Expressionism, from Die Brücke in Dresden (1905) to the Berlin journals Der Sturm and Die Aktion and Frans Masereel's woodcut novels.
Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration1910–1940 · East AsiaThe 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.
Surrealist Graphics1924–1960 · Western Europe, North AmericaLaunched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious.
Escuela Bruguera (Spanish Humour Comics)1947–1986 · Southern EuropeThe house style of Editorial Bruguera's humour cartoonists in Barcelona from 1947 to 1986, named the 'Escuela Bruguera' by Terenci Moix in 1968.
Polish Poster School1950–1990 · Eastern EuropeA painterly, metaphorical poster culture that flourished in communist Poland, chiefly for film, theatre, opera and circus.
Underground Comix1968–1982 · North America, Western EuropeSelf-published, adults-only comic books from the San Francisco counterculture, made outside the Comics Code on the newsstand comic's format.
Turkish Weekly Humour Magazines (Gırgır to Uykusuz)1972–2025 · Middle East & North AfricaIstanbul's weekly cartoon magazines, from the Aral brothers' Gırgır (1972), which sold up to about half a million copies, through the chain of breakaways that followed it: Limon, LeMan, Penguen and Uykusuz.
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.
Ghanaian Movie Poster1985–2005 · Sub-Saharan AfricaHand-painted posters commissioned by Ghana's mobile video clubs from about 1985, painted by apprenticed sign painters on stitched flour sacks to advertise VHS screenings of Hollywood, Hong Kong, Nigerian and Indian films.
Bitterkomix (Afrikaans Underground Comics)1992–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Afrikaans underground comics magazine founded in Stellenbosch in 1992 by Anton Kannemeyer (Joe Dog) and Conrad Botes (Konradski), with Mark Kannemeyer (Lorcan White).
Corporate Memphis2017–present · North America, Global / networkedThe flat vector illustration style that became the default visual voice of big tech in the late 2010s: faceless, ethnically non-specific figures with elongated limbs and tiny heads, drawn in bright flat colour among blobs, leaves and confetti.

Styles that often use it 49

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

Styles that use it now and then 43

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.

Comic & cartoonin 63 of 107
Line illustrationin 79 of 107
Sequential narrativein 52 of 107
Agitational & persuasivein 52 of 107
Stylised figurationin 89 of 107
Ironic & self-awarein 42 of 107

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in form & shape