Colour · Transitions
Flat fields
Unmodulated areas of colour.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under colour: what is the colour strategy?
- styles make it
- 274
- as a defining choice
- 107
- as a usual one
- 135
- now and then
- 32
- avoid it
- 2
Styles defined by it 107
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
- Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic & Register CompositionThe visual system of pharaonic Egypt, in which writing is made of pictures and pictures are ruled like writing.
- Ethiopian Ge'ez Manuscript & Haräg IlluminationThe manuscript art of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, written in the Ge'ez syllabary on parchment from the Garima Gospels (radiocarbon-dated to roughly the 4th–7th centuries) to the present.
- Đông Hồ & Hàng Trống Folk PrintsVietnam'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.
- Sápmi Graphic Identity (Duodji & Gákti Colour Code)Duodji is Sámi handicraft: hard work in wood, horn and bone, soft work in skin and cloth; drums painted with alder-bark figures survive from the 17th and 18th centuries.
- 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.
- 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.
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)The flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament.
- 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.
- Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)The devotional imagery of Senegal's Sufi brotherhoods, above all the Mourides: reverse paintings on glass (souwère), made in Senegal's cities since about 1900, and the murals, banners, prints and photocopies that multiply one 1913 photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba across Dakar and Touba.
- London Transport DesignThe design programme Frank Pick built for London's Underground from 1908 and the London Passenger Transport Board (1933–40), continued by Harold Hutchison (1947–66).
- Ndebele Geometric PaintingThe mural tradition of Southern Ndebele women, who paint homestead walls and gateways, and later canvases and objects, with bold, symmetrical geometric designs.
- Vietnamese Propaganda Poster (Tranh cổ động)The state poster art of Vietnam from the 1945 August Revolution to today.
- Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)The modernist image of Greece made for the National Tourism Organisation (EOT) by Michalis Katzourakis, its art adviser in 1960-1967, and by Frederick Carabott, who advised it until 1967; in 1962 the two also founded the K&K Athens Advertising Centre.
- 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.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)The posters of the Atelier populaire, set up when students, teachers and artists occupied the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris on 14 May 1968, until police cleared the school on 27 June.
- Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)The graphic language of Italy's organised football supporters, the ultras, from the late 1960s, and of the groups that copied them across Europe, North Africa and beyond.
- 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.
- Bitterkomix (Afrikaans Underground Comics)The Afrikaans underground comics magazine founded in Stellenbosch in 1992 by Anton Kannemeyer (Joe Dog) and Conrad Botes (Konradski), with Mark Kannemeyer (Lorcan White).
- Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)Urban Indian gift and T-shirt design from the late 1990s into the 2010s that recasts the street and bazaar as ironic, affectionate icons: truck tails and 'Horn OK Please', auto-rickshaws, Ambassadors and Chetaks, cutting chai, old Bollywood stills and dialogues, Bhagat Singh in place of Che.
- Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals)A state warning system stacked on commercial food packs.
- Neo-BrutalismA friendly, commercial descendant of web brutalism that keeps its blunt boxes but adds candy colour: thick black outlines, hard unblurred offset shadows, flat saturated fills and chunky sans-serif type on conventional, usable layouts.
- Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh GraphicsGraphics of Palestinian identity and of solidarity with Palestinians, made by Palestinian artists, the diaspora and supporters worldwide and shared mainly online, above all since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
Styles that often use it 135
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
- Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)Square Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it.
- Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)Tibetan Buddhist and Bön woodblock printing, from the first printed Kangyur (1410, cut in China) and the 15th-century presses of Gungthang to the great printing houses of Narthang, Derge and Lhasa.
- 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.
- 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.
- Thai Yantra (Yant) DiagramsThai protective diagrams in which Pali formulae, written in Khom, a sacred script derived from Khmer, are packed into squares, circles, triangles, spires and the outlines of Buddhas, monks and tigers, often framed by lines of script.
- 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.
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)Cheap 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 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.
- Bezalel SchoolThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
- Italian FuturismLaunched by Marinetti's 1909 manifesto, Futurism glorified speed, machines, the city and war, and turned the printed page into an explosive, noisy field.
- 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.
- Vorticism & BLAST TypographyLondon's short-lived rival to Futurism, launched by Wyndham Lewis with BLAST (dated 20 June 1914; War Number, July 1915).
- Russian ConstructivismConstructivism rejected art for art's sake in favour of the artist-engineer building useful things for the new Soviet society.
- BauhausThe German school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 moved from Expressionist craft ideals to a programme of 'art and technology' after 1923, when Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt made its printing and advertising workshops a laboratory for functional communication.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) GraphicsMexico's first avant-garde (1921-27), launched when Manuel Maples Arce pasted his manifesto Actual No. 1 on Mexico City walls.
- Italian Fascist Graphics (Romanità & Exhibition Photomontage)The visual language of Italian Fascism, which turned modernist means to a cult of Rome and of the Duce.
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)The print side of São Paulo's Modernismo (1922-29), set in jobbing print shops.
- Amazonian Boat Lettering (Abridores de Letras)The painted boat names of Pará's rivers in the Brazilian Amazon, made for about a century by self-taught riverside painters (abridores de letras).
- Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)Luxury photo-propaganda magazines that imperial Japan sent abroad, 1934–45.
- Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco)The cover language of bossa nova, made in Rio by the self-taught designer César Villela, first at Odeon and then on the first sixteen LPs of Aloysio de Oliveira's label Elenco (from 1963), often around Francisco Pereira's photographs.
- Palestinian Resistance PosterThe poster culture of the Palestinian national movement after 1965, issued by the PLO and its factions from Beirut and other Arab capitals for refugee camps, homes and solidarity audiences abroad.
- Mexico 68 Olympic & Metro IdentityThe graphic programme of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the city's first Metro line.
- Black Panther Party GraphicsThe visual language of the Black Panther Party, created largely by its Minister of Culture, Emory Douglas, for the weekly newspaper The Black Panther.
- Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective)The posters and identities of Grapus, a Paris collective founded in 1970 by Communist Party members who had met in the 1968 poster workshops.
- Roots Reggae Sleeve Art & Rasta IconographyThe record sleeves of roots reggae, from Catch a Fire (1973) until dancehall took over in the 1980s.
- Ethiopian Revolutionary Poster (Derg Era)The poster and mural art of the Derg military government and its successor, Mengistu's People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1974–1991), made mostly by teachers and students of the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD.
- Chicha PosterFluorescent screen-printed street posters that emerged in the 1980s to promote chicha (Andean cumbia) concerts in Lima, made by printers from Andean migrant communities.
- South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi)A 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?'.
- Indonesian Woodcut Activism (Taring Padi)The protest graphics of Taring Padi, the collective founded by students and activists in Yogyakarta in 1998 as Suharto fell, and of the punk and activist woodcut scenes around it.
- Cartonera Books (Latin American Cardboard Publishing)Books of Latin America's cartonera presses, begun by Eloísa Cartonera in Buenos Aires in 2003 after Argentina's 2001 crash: photocopied texts stapled and glued by hand into covers cut from used boxes, usually bought from cartoneros (waste pickers) above the market price.
- Internet Ugly & Meme VernacularA deliberately amateur image dialect of forums, imageboards and social feeds, named 'Internet Ugly' by Nick Douglas in 2014.
- Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)Graphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small.
- Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)The street graphics of Oaxaca City since the 2006 teachers' strike and APPO uprising, when ASARO, the stencil collective Lapiztola and later workshops such as Colectivo Subterráneos made the colonial centre's walls a newspaper.
- Hong Kong Protest Art (Umbrella Movement to the 2019–20 Protests)The graphics of Hong Kong's democracy protests, from the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the national security law of 2020, in two linked media.
- 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 32
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke)c. 0–present
- Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)c. 900–present
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type1810–1900
- Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)1843–2012
- Cubist Pictorial Space1907–1925
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat)1919–1955
- Mavo1923–1925
- Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)1930–1970
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster1932–1989
- Onitsha Market Pamphlets1947–1980
- Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)1947–present
- Bonelli Fumetto (Italian Popular Adventure Comics)1948–present
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)1962–1985
- Rorke's Drift Linocut1962–1982
- Picó Sound-System Painting (Colombian Caribbean)1967–present
- Underground Comix1968–1982
- Western Desert Iconography1971–present
- Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988
- Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)1980–present
- Demoscene Graphics (Cracktros, Demos & Text-Mode Art)1985–present
- Ghanaian Movie Poster1985–2005
- Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)1985–present
- Global Village Coffeehouse1988–2003
- Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi)1999–present
- Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present
- Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics)2005–present
- Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay2006–present
- Hipster Artisanal Revival2007–2018
- Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)2011–present
- Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)2011–2024
- Data Humanism2014–present
- Solarpunk2014–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Flatin 222 of 274
- Stylised figurationin 201 of 274
- Limited spot coloursin 179 of 274
- Geometric primitivesin 112 of 274
- Repetition & rhythmin 155 of 274
- All capsin 140 of 274
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.