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Space & hierarchy · Density

Generous white space

Emptiness is an active element: wide margins and quiet areas.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under space & hierarchy: how is attention distributed?

styles make it: 115
as a defining choice: 28
as a usual one: 60
now and then: 27
avoid it: 84

Styles defined by it 28

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

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.
Rinpa & Saga-bon1600–present · East AsiaA Kyoto school of decorative design that revived the poetry and court painting of the Heian period, begun around 1600 by the calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu and the painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu and carried on less by teaching than by admiration across generations: Ogata Kōrin, Sakai Hōitsu, Kamisaka Sekka.
Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)1626–present · East AsiaA kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting.
Neoclassical Book Typography1757–1830 · Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central EuropeThe Enlightenment book stripped of Renaissance woodcut decoration.
Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaTwo linked graphic languages of southeastern Nigeria.
Suprematism1915–1925 · Eastern EuropeKazimir Malevich's non-objective art, unveiled with the Black Square at the 0.10 exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, reduced painting to pure geometric planes floating in white, infinite space.
Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book1922–1936 · Eastern EuropeThin, large picture books made in Petrograd/Leningrad from 1922 to the mid-1930s for Raduga and the Gosizdat children's department led by Samuil Marshak, with Vladimir Lebedev as art editor.
Die Neue Typographie1923–1940 · Central Europe, Western EuropeThe programme that turned avant-garde experiment into a functional typographic method, named by Moholy-Nagy in 1923 and codified in Jan Tschichold's 'elementare typographie' (1925) and Die neue Typographie (1928).
Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)1923–1949 · East AsiaThe covers of China's New Literature.
Scandinavian Functionalism1930–present · Northern EuropeNordic functionalism (funkis) arrived in graphic form with Sigurd Lewerentz's posters and winged emblem for the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition.
Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri)1933–1975 · Southern EuropeThe Milan-centred school that married Bauhaus- and Swiss-trained discipline with Italian painterly wit for enlightened industrial patrons such as Olivetti, Pirelli and La Rinascente.
UPA & Cartoon Modern1944–1960 · North AmericaThe modern cartoon of United Productions of America (UPA) and the 1950s films, commercials and books it inspired.
International Typographic Style1950–1975 · Central EuropeA post-war refinement of the New Typography in which the mathematical grid, objective photography and neo-grotesque sans-serifs were used to communicate with clarity and neutrality.
Japanese Postwar Modernism1950–1990 · East AsiaBuilding on the New Typography that Hiromu Hara and the Nippon Kobo circle had absorbed in the 1930s, Japan's postwar graphic designers fused the grid, sans-serif and objective photography of European modernism with indigenous traditions of family crests (kamon), asymmetry and charged emptiness (ma).
Zagreb School of Animated Film1954–1980 · Southern Europe, Central EuropeThe modernist animation of Zagreb Film's Studio for Animated Film, grown from reduced-animation advertisements of 1954-1955 and named the 'Zagreb school' by Georges Sadoul and André Martin after Cannes 1958.
Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio)1956–1989 · East AsiaThe 'national style' of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which turned from Disney and Soviet models to Chinese media: Peking-opera masks and movement, paper-cut and folded-paper figures, mural and New Year print colour and, from 1960, ink-wash painting set in motion after Qi Baishi and Li Keran.
Kinngait (Cape Dorset) Inuit Printmaking1957–present · North AmericaPrints from the Inuit co-operative studio at Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, with a catalogued collection every year since 1959.
Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco)1960–1968 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe 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.
Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism1964–present · East AsiaThe studio design of Hong Kong from the 1960s, made for banks, developers, trade bodies, hotels and cultural events in a city that had to speak Chinese and English at once.
Minimalist Graphic Design1965–present · Global / networkedModernism reduced to its barest means, informed by 1960s Minimal art and Japanese emptiness: one image or line of type, vast white or neutral space, a monochrome or near-monochrome palette and meticulous typographic detail.
ECM Sleeve Aesthetic (Munich)1969–present · Central EuropeThe cover language of the Munich label ECM, made since 1970 by Barbara Wojirsch, Dieter Rehm and later Sascha Kleis and Mayo Bucher with co-founder Manfred Eicher.
Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe full-colour, vertical-scroll comic that Korean web portals made standard in the 2000s and smartphone apps took worldwide.
Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China')2003–present · East AsiaChinese book design since 2003, when Shanghai founded the yearly 'Most Beautiful Books of China' award, whose winners go on to Leipzig.
Modern Calligraphy and Brush Lettering2005–present · North America, Western Europe, Global / networkedThe loose pointed-pen and brush-pen script of wedding stationery and the 2010s craft boom.
Neo-Swiss Revival2005–present · Global / networked, Central Europe, Western EuropeA contemporary revival of the International Typographic Style, fuelled by digital re-releases of neo-grotesques and by studios such as Experimental Jetset and Norm: modular grids, flush-left grotesque type, huge tightly set headlines and flat fields of black, white and one signal colour.
Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)2011–present · North America, Northern Europe, Global / networkedThe look of Kinfolk, the slow-living quarterly founded in Portland in 2011 and run from Copenhagen since 2015, and of the indie lifestyle titles and Instagram feeds that copied it.
DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism2012–2022 · North America, Global / networkedThe friendly, frictionless minimalism of 2010s direct-to-consumer start-ups, built for the phone screen, the Instagram feed and the unboxing.
Dark Tech Minimalism2019–present · North America, Global / networkedThe dark, restrained aesthetic of developer tools and SaaS landing pages since about 2019: near-black grounds, grey type ramps, a neutral grotesque such as Inter, hairline borders, soft radial glows and bento grids of crisp product screenshots.

Styles that often use it 60

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

Styles that use it now and then 27

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.

Isolated objectin 94 of 115
Light groundin 99 of 115
Ornament-freein 51 of 115
Dynamic asymmetryin 59 of 115
Calm & contemplativein 42 of 115
Rational & objectivein 41 of 115

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in space & hierarchy