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Typography · Display & special

Experimental & distorted

Stretched, fragmented, layered or deliberately hard-to-read letters.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under typography: what do the letters look like, and how are they set?

styles make it: 71
as a defining choice: 12
as a usual one: 23
now and then: 36
avoid it: 48

Styles defined by it 12

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

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.
Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)1980–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe name-writing of São Paulo's pixadores, which since the 1980s has covered walls and façades and, from the 1990s, the upper floors of tower blocks.
Emigre & Early Digital Type1984–1998 · North AmericaRudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko's magazine and type foundry, launched in 1984 alongside the first Macintosh, turned the computer's low-resolution constraints into a new typographic idiom.
Out-of-Square Hangul Typography1985–present · East AsiaA Korean typographic movement that frees Hangul from the equal square in which metal and photo type had always set each syllable.
Black Metal Graphics1990–present · Northern Europe, Global / networkedThe 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).
Grunge Typography1990–2000 · North America, Western EuropeThe 1990s magazine and music-industry style in which type was layered, eroded, overlapped and cropped until legibility became negotiable.
Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)2005–present · East AsiaGraphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small.
Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters)2007–present · Central EuropeLucerne's poster culture for small non-commercial venues (Südpol, Neubad, Treibhaus) and the Weltformat festival.
Acid Graphics / New Ugly2016–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, Central EuropeA late-2010s club and poster style that updates 1990s rave graphics with modern 3D tools: liquid-chrome and melting lettering, neo-tribal spikes, wireframes, op-art patterns and acid-green palettes on black, mixed with blackletter and stretched grotesques.
Kinetic Typography & Variable Type2016–present · Global / networked, North America, Western EuropeTypography as the moving image: letterforms that stretch, squash, rotate and morph along variable-font axes, loop seamlessly and cut to the beat of music, used for identities, social-media posters and digital out-of-home screens.
Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)2018–present · Western Europe, Central EuropeA Franco-Belgian type practice that redesigns written French for gender inclusion inside the word.

Styles that often use it 23

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

Styles that use it now and then 36

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 typography