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Colour · Key & temperature

Earth & mineral

Ochres, umbers, olive, terracotta, indigo.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under colour: what is the colour strategy?

styles make it: 96
as a defining choice: 18
as a usual one: 35
now and then: 43
avoid it: 21

Styles defined by it 18

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

Amazigh Sign System & Tifinaghc. 0–present · Middle East & North Africa, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe visual language shared by Amazigh communities from the Rif, Atlas and Kabylie to the Aurès and the Tuareg Sahara.
Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic & Register Compositionc. 0–394 · Middle East & North AfricaThe visual system of pharaonic Egypt, in which writing is made of pictures and pictures are ruled like writing.
Andean Woven Graphic Systemsc. 600–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphic systems of Andean cloth, the region's most prestigious medium, in which every motif is built on the warp-and-weft grid.
Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics1500–present · East AsiaA Japanese aesthetic rooted in Zen and the wabi tea ceremony that prizes austerity, imperfection, impermanence and the charged interval (ma) between things.
Batik Pattern Tradition1600–present · Southeast AsiaThe Javanese wax-resist textile tradition in which hot wax is drawn with a canting or stamped with a copper cap, then dyed in successive baths to build layered all-over patterns.
Đông Hồ & Hàng Trống Folk Prints1600–present · Southeast AsiaVietnam's two classic folk-print schools, bought for Tết. Đông Hồ families press each colour from its own carved block onto giấy điệp, dó paper brushed with ground scallop shell whose streaked, faintly sparkling surface serves as the white, and print the black line last.
Diné (Navajo) Weaving Design1700–present · North AmericaThe tapestry-woven design tradition of Diné (Navajo) weavers, recorded in Spanish sources from the early 18th century.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design1700–present · OceaniaBarkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures.
Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau)1892–1914 · Western EuropeThe Dutch branch of Art Nouveau, seen mostly in book covers, vignettes and posters.
Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe mud-dyed cotton cloth of the Bamana and other Malian peoples, in which the ground rather than the motif is painted: cloth dyed yellow with n'gallama leaves is covered around each sign with fermented iron-rich mud, and the unpainted signs are then bleached pale.
Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954 · South AsiaThe nationalist, anti-academic art of Calcutta and Santiniketan, which turned from oil-paint naturalism and chromolithograph gloss to Indian and pan-Asian sources.
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.
Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk1912–present · OceaniaPainting in ochres on flattened stringybark by Yolŋu, Kunwinjku, Kuninjku and other clans of Arnhem Land, carrying ceremonial designs into portable form; collected from 1912, painted through art centres since the 1970s.
Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop)1934–present · North AmericaThe mainland American fantasy of the South Seas, begun by Don the Beachcomber's Hollywood bar (about 1934) and Trader Vic's in Oakland and at its height in the Polynesian restaurants of the 1950s and 60s.
Warli Painting1970–present · South AsiaThe ritual wall painting of the Warli, an Adivasi people of the northern Sahyadri in Maharashtra, carried onto paper and canvas from the 1970s by Jivya Soma Mashe and others.
Western Desert Iconography1971–present · OceaniaThe acrylic painting movement that took form at Papunya in 1971, when men there painted the Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall and then on board, carrying an older practice of sand, body and ceremonial designs into lasting form. 'Western Desert' is an umbrella name: the movement also includes Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Arrernte painters of the Central Desert.
Global Village Coffeehouse1988–2003 · North AmericaThe faux-naive, earth-toned illustration style that late-1980s American designers set against Memphis, and that chain cafés, bookstores, packaging and clip art spread through the 1990s.
Plain Tobacco Packaging2012–present · Oceania, Western Europe, Northern Europe, North America, Global / networkedA packaging language written into law to strip tobacco of persuasion.

Styles that often use it 35

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.

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in colour