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Layout & composition · Framing

Isolated object

A single object or figure isolated on a plain ground.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under layout & composition: how is the picture plane organised?

styles make it: 198
as a defining choice: 36
as a usual one: 106
now and then: 56
avoid it: 5

Styles defined by it 36

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

Kamon (Japanese Family Crests)c. 1100–present · East AsiaJapan's family crests: small one-colour emblems that reduce a plant, animal, tool or pattern to a flat silhouette, mirrored or repeated around a centre, often ringed and drawn with compass and brush.
Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)1500–present · Southeast AsiaThe 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.
Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)1500–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southeast AsiaPictorial 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.
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.
Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints1830–1930 · South AsiaThe bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs.
Lotería Card Imagery (Mexican Lotería)1887–present · Latin America & Caribbean, North AmericaThe picture deck of Mexico's lotería, a bingo-like game of chance.
Plakatstil / Sachplakat1905–1920 · Central EuropeThe German 'object poster' launched by Lucian Bernhard's Priester match poster and printed by Berlin's Hollerbaum & Schmidt.
Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954 · South AsiaThe nationalist, anti-academic art of Calcutta and Santiniketan, which turned from oil-paint naturalism and chromolithograph gloss to Indian and pan-Asian sources.
Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat)1919–1955 · Central EuropeThe Swiss descendant of the German object poster, made in Zurich and above all Basel from 1919 to the early 1950s.
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.
French Post-War Visual-Gag Poster (Savignac, Villemot, Morvan)1948–1979 · Western EuropeThe humorous street poster of post-war Paris, which took off in 1949 when Raymond Savignac and Bernard Villemot showed their rejected projects together and Savignac's Monsavon cow, its udder filling a bar of soap, went up on the walls.
West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)1953–1990 · Central EuropeThe art-film and culture poster Hans Hillmann developed from 1953 for the West German distributors Neue Filmkunst and Atlas Film, which his Kassel student Gunter Rambow took with Gerhard Lienemeyer into staged photo posters for theatre, publishers and protest.
Corporate Identity Modernism1955–1990 · North America, Western Europe, Global / networkedModernist reduction applied to corporate communication.
Polish Cold War Neon (PRL Neonisation)1956–1981 · Eastern EuropeThe neon of People's Poland: after the 1956 thaw a state firm, Reklama, and a planned 'neonisation' set out to make war-ruined Warsaw a European capital of neon.
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.
Turkish Modernist Poster & Graphic Design1959–2000 · Middle East & North AfricaThe posters of Istanbul's first generation of professional graphic designers for theatres, films, festivals and exhibitions.
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.
Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)1960–1974 · Southern EuropeThe 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.
Indian Institutional Modernism (NID)1961–1990 · South AsiaThe design culture of independent India's public institutions, banks and broadcasters.
Baybayin Revival Graphics1963–present · Southeast Asia, North AmericaThe revival of baybayin, the precolonial Tagalog abugida, as a mark of Filipino identity.
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.
Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)1968 · Western EuropeThe 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.
Tingatinga Painting1968–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaA Tanzanian popular painting school begun in Dar es Salaam by Edward Tingatinga (1932–1972), who from 1968 painted animals, birds and village scenes in glossy bicycle enamel on square hardboard ceiling boards for residents and tourists.
Stencil Street Art1978–present · Western Europe, Latin America & Caribbean, North America, Global / networkedPictures cut rather than drawn: a photograph is reduced to two or three flat tones, cut into card and sprayed onto a wall, usually uninvited, so one hard-edged figure appears in the street, in black with at most one accent colour.
Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)1981–present · South AsiaPainting 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.
Hype Streetwear Graphics (Box Logo to Quotation Marks)1993–present · North America, East Asia, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Global / networkedThe logo-led graphics of streetwear since the 1990s: one wordmark or emblem on a plain T-shirt, hoodie or object is the product.
Emoji Pictographic Language1997–present · East Asia, Global / networkedPictographs typed as characters and set inline in running text.
Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)1997–present · South AsiaUrban 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.
Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi)1999–present · East AsiaBrush-written Hangul made for commerce, not the scroll.
Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)2000–present · East AsiaJapan's local mascots: characters commissioned by prefectures, towns and tourism bodies to stand for a place, named yuru-kyara ('loose characters') by the illustrator Jun Miura around 2000.
Natural Wine Label Art2007–present · Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Global / networkedThe labels of the natural (low-intervention) wine scene, which grew from Beaujolais into a worldwide network of small growers, bars and importers.
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.
Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)2016–present · North America, Western Europe, Global / networkedThe illustrated cover of the contemporary romantic comedy: a couple drawn as flat cartoon figures with simplified faces, from silhouettes and hidden faces to a few cartoon features, caught in one gesture that states the premise, on a single saturated ground of teal, pink, yellow or purple, under a hand-lettered title so large that the figures often lean on it.
NFT Profile-Picture Collections (CryptoPunks to Bored Apes)2017–present · Global / networked, North AmericaSets of thousands of avatar portraits that code assembles from one or two hundred hand-drawn traits, each sold as a token on a blockchain.
Claymorphism & Soft 3D2020–present · Global / networkedA soft, toy-like 3D look from product design around 2020, given the name 'claymorphism' in a December 2021 article by Michał Malewicz.
Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh Graphics2021–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedGraphics 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 106

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

Styles that use it now and then 56

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.

Single focal pointin 167 of 198
Generous white spacein 92 of 198
Restrained accentsin 105 of 198
Warm & approachablein 80 of 198
Emblems & badgesin 98 of 198
Offset printingin 106 of 198

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in layout & composition