Colour · Strategy
Monochrome
A single hue, or black and white.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under colour: what is the colour strategy?
- styles make it
- 165
- as a defining choice
- 56
- as a usual one
- 66
- now and then
- 43
- avoid it
- 29
Styles defined by it 56
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
- Hebrew MicrographyA 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.
- Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)Tibetan Buddhist and Bön woodblock printing, from the first printed Kangyur (1410, cut in China) and the 15th-century presses of Gungthang to the great printing houses of Narthang, Derge and Lhasa.
- Thai Yantra (Yant) DiagramsThai protective diagrams in which Pali formulae, written in Khom, a sacred script derived from Khmer, are packed into squares, circles, triangles, spires and the outlines of Buddhas, monks and tigers, often framed by lines of script.
- Urdu Katib LithographyFor about a century and a half Urdu chose lithography over movable type, because metal type could not reproduce the sloping, stacked ligatures of Nastaʿlīq.
- Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)Cheap broadsheets, chapbooks and gazettes sold on the streets of Porfirian Mexico City by the publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and illustrated by Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada.
- Vorticism & BLAST TypographyLondon's short-lived rival to Futurism, launched by Wyndham Lewis with BLAST (dated 20 June 1914; War Number, July 1915).
- AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)The political photomontage John Heartfield made for the communist weekly AIZ from 1930 to 1938, in Berlin and, from 1933, in Prague exile.
- Machine-Age Simplified Arabic TypeArabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen.
- Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)The 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.
- Punk & DIY ZineThe graphic voice of punk rock in fanzines, record sleeves and gig flyers: images and words cut from newspapers, typed or scrawled, pasted down and run off on a photocopier.
- Black Metal GraphicsThe 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).
- Bitterkomix (Afrikaans Underground Comics)The Afrikaans underground comics magazine founded in Stellenbosch in 1992 by Anton Kannemeyer (Joe Dog) and Conrad Botes (Konradski), with Mark Kannemeyer (Lorcan White).
- Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)Graphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small.
- Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)The street graphics of Oaxaca City since the 2006 teachers' strike and APPO uprising, when ASARO, the stencil collective Lapiztola and later workshops such as Colectivo Subterráneos made the colonial centre's walls a newspaper.
- Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals)A state warning system stacked on commercial food packs.
Styles that often use it 66
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
- Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)Square Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it.
- Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery CalligraphyThe Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it.
- Persian Nastaʿlīq Calligraphy (Qiṭʿa, Chalipa and Siyāh-mashq)The 'hanging' script of Persian poetry and an art of the single sheet.
- Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)Pictorial 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.
- Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)Iran's popular picture-stories in two media.
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)The flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament.
- German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)The German reform of the book, from the magazine Pan (1895) to the private presses that ended around 1933.
- Italian FuturismLaunched by Marinetti's 1909 manifesto, Futurism glorified speed, machines, the city and war, and turned the printed page into an explosive, noisy field.
- DadaBorn in wartime Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 and spreading to Berlin, Hanover, Cologne and Paris, Dada used chance, absurdity and provocation against the culture that had produced the war.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) GraphicsMexico's first avant-garde (1921-27), launched when Manuel Maples Arce pasted his manifesto Actual No. 1 on Mexico City walls.
- Italian Fascist Graphics (Romanità & Exhibition Photomontage)The visual language of Italian Fascism, which turned modernist means to a cult of Rome and of the Duce.
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)The print side of São Paulo's Modernismo (1922-29), set in jobbing print shops.
- MavoTokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925).
- Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)Luxury photo-propaganda magazines that imperial Japan sent abroad, 1934–45.
- Onitsha Market PamphletsCheap, stapled pamphlets of romance, advice, drama and political biography, written by students, clerks, journalists and traders and printed by jobbing letterpress shops around Onitsha Main Market in eastern Nigeria from the late 1940s.
- Dazibao (Big-Character Posters)Handwritten wall posters in large brush characters that turned the walls of Mao-era China into a public forum for criticism, denunciation and, at the Democracy Wall, dissent.
- Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco)The 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.
- Mexico 68 Olympic & Metro IdentityThe graphic programme of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the city's first Metro line.
- Swiss Punk / New Wave TypographyA rebellion from inside the Swiss school: Wolfgang Weingart and his Basel students kept the grotesque and the grid but set them in motion with extreme letterspacing, stepped and angled lines, rules and bars, enlarged halftone screens and layered film montage.
- Ethiopian Revolutionary Poster (Derg Era)The poster and mural art of the Derg military government and its successor, Mengistu's People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1974–1991), made mostly by teachers and students of the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD.
- Indonesian Woodcut Activism (Taring Padi)The 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.
- Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China')Chinese book design since 2003, when Shanghai founded the yearly 'Most Beautiful Books of China' award, whose winners go on to Leipzig.
- Danmaku Bullet-Comment OverlayThe 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.
Styles that use it now and then 43
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Amazigh Sign System & Tifinaghc. 0–present
- Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)c. 900–present
- European Heraldryc. 1140–present
- Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)c. 1230–present
- Mithila (Madhubani) Paintingc. 1350–present
- Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)1500–present
- Rinpa & Saga-bon1600–present
- Sápmi Graphic Identity (Duodji & Gákti Colour Code)1600–present
- Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)1626–present
- Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints1670–1900
- Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints1830–1930
- Arts & Crafts Movement1860–1920
- Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering1861–1951
- Mir iskusstva Book Art1898–1927
- Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954
- Hungarian Revolutionary Poster1912–1919
- Russian Constructivism1917–1934
- Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)1923–1949
- Penguin Paperback Design (Three Bands to the Marber Grid)1935–1972
- Vietnamese Propaganda Poster (Tranh cổ động)1945–present
- Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)1951–1975
- Black Panther Party Graphics1967–1980
- Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics1967–1973
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve1968–1983
- Turkish Weekly Humour Magazines (Gırgır to Uykusuz)1972–2025
- Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)1974–1987
- Lebanese Civil War Party Poster1975–1990
- La Movida Madrileña Graphics1977–1988
- South African Resistance Poster1978–1994
- Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics1980–1989
- Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)1981–present
- Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)1985–present
- ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics1987–1995
- Grunge Typography1990–2000
- Emoji Pictographic Language1997–present
- Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular2003–present
- Natural Wine Label Art2007–present
- Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014
- Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)2011–present
- GOV.UK Design (GDS Style)2012–present
- Analog Horror Graphics2015–present
- Weirdcore & Dreamcore2019–present
- Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh Graphics2021–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Typography onlyin 81 of 165
- Paper & letterpress bitein 78 of 165
- Light groundin 129 of 165
- Line illustrationin 100 of 165
- Pen, brush & inkin 80 of 165
- Letterpressin 47 of 165
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.
- Nianhua & Chinese Folk Printc. 1100–present
- Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards1639–present
- Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting1776–present
- Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)1845–present
- Belle Époque Lithographic Poster1866–1914
- Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present
- Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino)1879–present
- Amazonian Boat Lettering (Abridores de Letras)1925–present
- Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)1929–present
- Egyptian Painted Film Poster1932–1996
- Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster1940–1999
- Jeepney Art1946–present
- Pakistani Truck Art1947–present
- Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu)1950–present
- Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)1956–present
- Tropicália Graphic Design1964–1975
- AfriCOBRA1968–present
- Tingatinga Painting1968–present
- Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken)1977–1994
- Memphis Design1981–1988
- Matatu & Nganya Art1990–present
- Nigerian Pentecostal Crusade Poster & Billboard1990–present
- Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)1997–present
- Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present
- Neo-Andean Architecture (Cholets)2005–present
- 'Good Morning' Greeting Images (WhatsApp Forward Vernacular)2013–present
- VTuber Avatar and Stream Graphics2016–present
- Guochao (China-Chic National Trend)2018–present
- Book Blob (Abstract Colour-Blob Literary Fiction Cover)2019–2023