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Colour · Key & temperature

Light ground

Paper-white or pale fields dominate.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under colour: what is the colour strategy?

styles make it: 231
as a defining choice: 30
as a usual one: 166
now and then: 35
avoid it: 7

Styles defined by it 30

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

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke)c. 0–present · East AsiaThe written art of China and the root of East Asian lettering.
Hebrew Micrographyc. 895–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA Jewish scribal art in which lines of minute Hebrew script, usually the Masoretic notes that guard the biblical text, are written so that the line itself draws: interlaced frames and star rosettes on full carpet pages, and animals, knights, fish and grotesques in the margins.
Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)c. 900–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe family of Arabic scripts of al-Andalus and North Africa, descended from early Kufic bookhands.
Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)c. 960–present · East AsiaThe page and letter of the East Asian book.
Mixteca-Puebla Codex Paintingc. 1200–1560 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted screenfold books of Postclassic southern and central Mexico (not the Maya codices): long strips of gesso-coated deerskin, folded like a screen and painted on both sides.
Renaissance Book Typographyc. 1460–1600 · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central EuropeThe printed book as shaped by humanist Italy and France: roman and italic types modelled on humanist handwriting, a single justified text block set in harmonious proportions within generous margins, and woodcut initials, borders and printer's devices as the only ornament.
Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram)1531–1724 · Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA European book genre in which, from Chrestien Wechel's Paris edition of 1534 on, every page or opening repeats one fixed unit: a short motto, an allegorical picture and an explanatory verse, which only together yield a moral, amorous or religious meaning.
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.
Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books)1752–1885 · Southeast AsiaPainted Burmese folding books of the Konbaung court and its monasteries.
Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing1822–1956 · Middle East & North AfricaThe page of the Arabic printed book as Egypt's state press at Bulaq shaped it from 1822: justified blocks of black Naskh type on pale paper, often boxed in a ruled frame, with an ornamental headpiece on the opening page, headings set larger or in a second script such as Nastaʿlīq, and almost no pictures.
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.
Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type)1864–present · South AsiaDevanagari as Javaji Dadaji's Bombay type foundry (1864) and Nirnaya Sagar Press (1869) cut and printed it: upright metal type with a strong headline, cut with the punch-cutter Ranoji Aru, and enough conjunct and 'Akhand' sorts to set Sanskrit, Vedic accents and Marathi whole.
German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)1895–1933 · Central EuropeThe German reform of the book, from the magazine Pan (1895) to the private presses that ended around 1933.
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.
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.
Escuela Bruguera (Spanish Humour Comics)1947–1986 · Southern EuropeThe house style of Editorial Bruguera's humour cartoonists in Barcelona from 1947 to 1986, named the 'Escuela Bruguera' by Terenci Moix in 1968.
Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type1947–present · Middle East & North AfricaArabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen.
Vicente Rojo & Mexican Editorial Modernism1953–1990 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe design of Mexico City's literary and cultural press, shaped from the 1950s by the Barcelona-born exile Vicente Rojo: México en la Cultura, the Revista de la Universidad, Plural, La Jornada and the covers of Ediciones Era.
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.
Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics1980–1989 · Eastern EuropeThe graphic language of Poland's Solidarność movement, from the August 1980 shipyard strike to the semi-free election of 4 June 1989.
Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)1985–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedOne fixed page for the Qur'an across much of the Muslim world: Uthman Taha's fully vowelled Naskh in fifteen justified lines, written so that every page ends at the end of a verse (the late Ottoman âyet-berkenar layout), inside a floral frame, with sura titles in framed cartouches and verse numbers in small round medallions.
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.
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.
Newsroom Data Graphics & Scrollytelling2009–present · North America, Western EuropeThe house style of newspaper graphics desks since about 2009–2011 (the New York Times graphics desk, D3.js, the Guardian Datablog): conventional charts drawn from the data, on a white or pale paper ground with light grey gridlines and no axis titles, lines labelled directly in place of a legend where possible and short annotations saying what to look at.
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.
GOV.UK Design (GDS Style)2012–present · Western EuropeThe text-led design of GOV.UK, the UK government's single website, built by the Government Digital Service from 2012 and codified in the GOV.UK Design System (2018).
Data Humanism2014–present · Southern Europe, North America, Western EuropeAn information-design approach that draws data rather than charting it, treating numbers as personal, approximate and human.

Styles that often use it 166

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

Styles that use it now and then 35

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.

Generous white spacein 98 of 231
Line illustrationin 134 of 231
Monochromein 129 of 231
Paper & letterpress bitein 96 of 231
Limited spot coloursin 158 of 231
Typography onlyin 97 of 231

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in colour