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Surface & texture · Flatness

Hard offset shadow

Solid, unblurred drop shadows and outlines.

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

styles make it: 48
as a defining choice: 5
as a usual one: 25
now and then: 18
avoid it: 4

Styles defined by it 5

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

Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering1800–present · Global / networkedLetters painted by trained sign writers on fascias, windows, walls, vehicles and showcards, from Victorian gold leaf on glass to Mexican rótulos, Indian bazaar boards and Ghanaian barbershop signs.
Amazonian Boat Lettering (Abridores de Letras)1925–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted boat names of Pará's rivers in the Brazilian Amazon, made for about a century by self-taught riverside painters (abridores de letras).
Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics1972–present · North America, Global / networkedBorn on New York's subway cars and Bronx party flyers, graffiti writing turns the writer's name into a monumental letter-sculpture: bubble, block and wildstyle letters with arrows, 3D drop shadows, fades and highlights, painted freehand in aerosol.
Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay2006–present · East AsiaThe 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.
Neo-Brutalism2020–present · Global / networked, North AmericaA 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.

Styles that often use it 25

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

Styles that use it now and then 18

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.

Full polychromein 42 of 48
Ornamented displayin 30 of 48
Complementary clashin 23 of 48
Eclectic mixingin 25 of 48
Horror vacuiin 33 of 48
Found & vernacular imageryin 22 of 48

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in surface & texture