Surface & texture · Flatness
Flat
No simulated depth or texture.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under surface & texture: what is the material finish?
- styles make it
- 241
- as a defining choice
- 69
- as a usual one
- 144
- now and then
- 28
- avoid it
- 23
Styles defined by it 69
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)The print side of São Paulo's Modernismo (1922-29), set in jobbing print shops.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)One fixed page for the Qur'an across much of the Muslim world: Uthman Taha's fully vowelled Naskh in fifteen justified lines, written so that every page ends at the end of a verse (the late Ottoman âyet-berkenar layout), inside a floral frame, with sura titles in framed cartouches and verse numbers in small round medallions.
- 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 144
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
- Hebrew MicrographyA Jewish scribal art in which lines of minute Hebrew script, usually the Masoretic notes that guard the biblical text, are written so that the line itself draws: interlaced frames and star rosettes on full carpet pages, and animals, knights, fish and grotesques in the margins.
- Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)The family of Arabic scripts of al-Andalus and North Africa, descended from early Kufic bookhands.
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery CalligraphyThe Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it.
- Persian Nastaʿlīq Calligraphy (Qiṭʿa, Chalipa and Siyāh-mashq)The 'hanging' script of Persian poetry and an art of the single sheet.
- 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.
- Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)Pictorial writing in which the strokes of a devotional text form one figure: a lion of ʿAli built from the Nad-e ʿAli prayer, a galleon whose hull spells the names of the Seven Sleepers, a peacock, a Sufi cap.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Bezalel SchoolThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
- 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).
- 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.
- Arnhem Land Bark Painting & RarrkPainting 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.
- 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.
- Vietnamese Propaganda Poster (Tranh cổ động)The state poster art of Vietnam from the 1945 August Revolution to today.
- Machine-Age Simplified Arabic TypeArabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen.
- 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.
- 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.
- Western Desert IconographyThe 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- Danmaku Bullet-Comment OverlayThe bullet-comment layer of Japanese and Chinese video sites, begun on Niconico in December 2006 and taken up by AcFun and Bilibili in 2008–2009.
- 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 28
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)c. 960–present
- Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)c. 1410–present
- Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books)1752–1885
- Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting1776–present
- Urdu Katib Lithography1837–present
- Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)1843–2012
- Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type)1864–present
- Belle Époque Lithographic Poster1866–1914
- Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai1910–1949
- Hungarian Revolutionary Poster1912–1919
- Italian Fascist Graphics (Romanità & Exhibition Photomontage)1921–1943
- Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book1922–1936
- Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)1929–1959
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster1932–1989
- Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)1933–1945
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age)1934–1993
- Zagreb School of Animated Film1954–1980
- AfriCOBRA1968–present
- Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)1968
- Afrobeat Sleeve Art1974–present
- Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988
- Ghanaian Funeral Poster & Banner1990–present
- Torres Strait Islander Linocut1991–present
- Arabic Calligraffiti2002–present
- Modern Calligraphy and Brush Lettering2005–present
- Natural Wine Label Art2007–present
- Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014
- Analog Horror Graphics2015–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Flat fieldsin 222 of 241
- Repetition & rhythmin 148 of 241
- Geometric primitivesin 104 of 241
- Rational & objectivein 61 of 241
- Limited spot coloursin 158 of 241
- Authoritative & institutionalin 87 of 241
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.
- Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke)c. 0–present
- Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)1845–present
- Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present
- Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino)1879–present
- Fileteado Porteño1890–present
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat)1919–1955
- Surrealist Graphics1924–1960
- Amazonian Boat Lettering (Abridores de Letras)1925–present
- Filipino Komiks1929–1999
- Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)1930–1970
- Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster1940–1999
- Jeepney Art1946–present
- Pakistani Truck Art1947–present
- Argentine Adventure Historieta (Oesterheld–Breccia)1948–1996
- Underground Comix1968–1982
- Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)1974–1987
- Grunge Typography1990–2000
- Matatu & Nganya Art1990–present
- Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi)1999–present
- Skeuomorphic UI2000–2013
- Frutiger Aero2004–2013
- Claymorphism & Soft 3D2020–present
- Generative-AI Image Aesthetic2022–present