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Space & hierarchy · Density

Horror vacui

Every area is filled; abundant, crowded, layered.

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

styles make it: 154
as a defining choice: 32
as a usual one: 74
now and then: 48
avoid it: 81

Styles defined by it 32

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

Nianhua & Chinese Folk Printc. 1100–present · East AsiaWoodblock pictures bought each New Year and pasted on doors, walls and kitchen shrines to invite luck and ward off harm: paired door gods, plump babies with carp, the Kitchen God, opera scenes and auspicious rebuses.
Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)c. 1230–present · Eastern Europe, Southern EuropeCyrillic letters bound into one even band of ornament.
Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting)c. 1300–1700 · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaThe court book painting of Iran and Timurid Herat, formed in Mongol Tabriz from Islamic, Byzantine and Chinese models: from Rashid al-Din's Jamiʿ al-tawarikh (1314) and the Great Mongol Shahnama to Behzad's Herat and the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, ending in the album pages of Safavid Isfahan.
Mithila (Madhubani) Paintingc. 1350–present · South AsiaWomen's ritual wall and floor painting from Mithila in north Bihar and Nepal's Terai, attested from at least the 14th century, seen by W.
Batik Pattern Tradition1600–present · Southeast AsiaThe Javanese wax-resist textile tradition in which hot wax is drawn with a canting or stamped with a copper cap, then dyed in successive baths to build layered all-over patterns.
Lubok Popular Print1650–1920 · Eastern EuropeCheap single-sheet Russian popular prints sold at fairs and by pedlars from the later 17th century: woodcut, later engraved and lithographed pictures of saints, fables, heroes, battles and satire in which text and image share one sheet.
Northwest Coast Formline Design1700–present · North AmericaThe 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.
Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji)1779–present · East AsiaThe fat, ink-heavy brush hands that Edo's professional sign and bill writers made for the city's entertainments: Kanteiryū for kabuki signboards and playbills from 1779, yose-moji for rakugo halls, sumō-ji for sumo ranking sheets, and squarish kago-moji for votive name slips.
Urdu Katib Lithography1837–present · South AsiaFor about a century and a half Urdu chose lithography over movable type, because metal type could not reproduce the sloping, stacked ligatures of Nastaʿlīq.
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)1843–2012 · Middle East & North AfricaIran's popular picture-stories in two media.
Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)1845–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe chromolithographed dress of Havana tobacco.
Guna Mola1900–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe 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.
Filipino Komiks1929–1999 · Southeast AsiaThe Philippines' newsstand comics magazines, from Kenkoy in Liwayway (1929) and Ace's Pilipino Komiks (1947) to the fall of the Roces titles in the late 1990s.
Jeepney Art1946–present · Southeast AsiaThe decoration of the Philippine jeepney, the shared taxi built from surplus US Army jeeps after 1945 and later from locally fabricated stainless-steel bodies by firms such as Sarao and Francisco Motors.
Pakistani Truck Art1947–present · South AsiaThe total decoration of Pakistan's trucks and buses, which grew from company marks and saints' portraits painted in the late 1940s into a workshop art in which painters, metalworkers, woodcarvers and reflective-tape specialists collaborate on each vehicle.
Hong Kong Neon & Beiwei Shop-Sign Lettering1950–present · East AsiaThe night-time signscape of Hong Kong's Kowloon streets.
Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu)1950–present · East AsiaCheap printed cotton covered edge to edge in large, full-blown peonies with lotuses, phoenixes, dragons, mandarin ducks, small florets and auspicious emblems on saturated vermilion, bright pink or sky-blue grounds.
Rorke's Drift Linocut1962–1982 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe prints of the Lutheran art centre that Swedish teachers Peder and Ulla Gowenius started at Ceza Hospital in 1962 and moved to Rorke's Drift in 1963: under apartheid, which denied Black South Africans formal fine-art education, the chief training ground for many Black artists.
Tropicália Graphic Design1964–1975 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphic language of Brazil's Tropicália, foreshadowed by Rogério Duarte's poster for Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964), which already devours Ulm modernism, and set by his 1968 covers for Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
Psychedelic Poster1965–1973 · North America, Western EuropeThe concert-poster language of the 1960s counterculture, born in San Francisco's Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms and echoed in London's underground press.
AfriCOBRA1968–present · North AmericaThe Black Arts Movement collective founded in Chicago in 1968 by Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu and Gerald Williams, after OBAC's Wall of Respect mural.
Underground Comix1968–1982 · North America, Western EuropeSelf-published, adults-only comic books from the San Francisco counterculture, made outside the Comics Code on the newsstand comic's format.
Western Desert Iconography1971–present · OceaniaThe 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.
Afrobeat Sleeve Art1974–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe painted and collaged record covers of Nigerian Afrobeat, defined by Lemi Ghariokwu's sleeves for Fela Kuti from Alagbon Close (1974) onward.
Chicha Poster1980–present · Latin America & CaribbeanFluorescent screen-printed street posters that emerged in the 1980s to promote chicha (Andean cumbia) concerts in Lima, made by printers from Andean migrant communities.
Torres Strait Islander Linocut1991–present · OceaniaRelief prints by Torres Strait Islander artists of Zenadth Kes, which grew from an Indigenous visual art course at Cairns College of TAFE by 1991 and the Mualgau Minaral collective on Mua (Moa) Island.
Nollywood Video Jacket & Film Poster1992–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe cover and poster art of Nigeria's home-video boom, from Living in Bondage (1992) on.
Indonesian Woodcut Activism (Taring Padi)1998–present · Southeast AsiaThe 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.
Japanese Dense Web Design1999–present · East AsiaThe information-packed look of Japan's big portals, shops, airlines and ministries: three or more narrow columns of boxed modules, crowded with small Japanese text, blue links, tiny thumbnails, dated news lists and rotating ad banners, in bright colours on a white page.
Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry)2008–present · Eastern EuropeMostly large-format information picture books made since 2008 by the Warsaw publisher Dwie Siostry with young illustrators led by Aleksandra and Daniel Mizieliński, graduates of the city's Academy of Fine Arts: atlases, cross-sections, labyrinths, activity books and wordless seek-and-find board books.
Hong Kong Protest Art (Umbrella Movement to the 2019–20 Protests)2014–2020 · East AsiaThe graphics of Hong Kong's democracy protests, from the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the national security law of 2020, in two linked media.
Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)2019–2022 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe street graphics of Chile's popular revolt, from 18 October 2019 to the March 2020 lockdowns, when a leaderless movement covered Santiago's Plaza de la Dignidad, the Alameda and other cities' walls.

Styles that often use it 74

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

Styles that use it now and then 48

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.

Abundant decorationin 68 of 154
Spiritual & sacredin 75 of 154
Communal & popularin 105 of 154
Framed panelsin 100 of 154
Borders & framesin 80 of 154
Hand-paintedin 70 of 154

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in space & hierarchy