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Surface & texture · Print artefacts

Grain & noise

Film grain, riso speckle, dithering noise.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under surface & texture: what is the material finish?

styles make it: 48
as a defining choice: 4
as a usual one: 17
now and then: 27
avoid it: 7

Styles defined by it 4

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

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).
Risograph & Indie Print Culture2008–present · Global / networkedA contemporary culture of zines, art books, posters and prints made on Japanese Risograph stencil duplicators, whose soy-based spot inks (fluorescent pink, yellow, blue, teal) are laid down one drum at a time.
Analog Horror Graphics2015–present · North America, Global / networkedA horror genre, mostly on YouTube, that tells its stories through imitation television and home-video graphics rather than actors: emergency-alert screens, station IDs, public-service, educational and instructional tapes, set between the 1960s and early 2000s.
Weirdcore & Dreamcore2019–present · Global / networkedAn internet aesthetic popularised on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube in the early 2020s, with dreamcore as its softer, pastel, cloud-filled sister.

Styles that often use it 17

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.

Treated photographyin 27 of 48
Full bleedin 29 of 48
Dark groundin 29 of 48
Ornament-freein 23 of 48
Web & CSSin 18 of 48
Found & vernacular imageryin 20 of 48

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in surface & texture