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Form & shape · Representation

Naturalistic depiction

Realistic, illusionistic rendering.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under form & shape: what is the shape language?

styles make it: 133
as a defining choice: 28
as a usual one: 51
now and then: 54
avoid it: 89

Styles defined by it 28

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

Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)1845–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe chromolithographed dress of Havana tobacco.
Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present · South AsiaMass-printed images of Hindu deities, epic scenes, saints, nationalist heroes and film stars, sold in bazaars and given away as business calendars, from the chromolithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio and Ravi Varma Press to Sivakasi offset.
Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino)1879–present · Southern EuropeThe Spanish bullfight poster in its illustrated form, from Marcelino de Unceta's lithographs (from 1879) to the Valencian house of Ortega, which supplied rings across Spain.
Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai1910–1949 · East AsiaThe commercial art of treaty-port Shanghai.
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.
Surrealist Graphics1924–1960 · Western Europe, North AmericaLaunched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious.
Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)1929–1959 · OceaniaThe pictorial posters that the Australian National Travel Association (ANTA, 1929), state tourist bureaux, railways and shipping lines commissioned to sell Australia abroad and at home.
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.
Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)1929–present · Southern EuropeThe cover system of Mondadori's crime series, Milan, from I Libri Gialli of 1929 to Il Giallo Mondadori today.
AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)1930–1938 · Central EuropeThe political photomontage John Heartfield made for the communist weekly AIZ from 1930 to 1938, in Berlin and, from 1933, in Prague exile.
Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)1930–1970 · Latin America & CaribbeanMexico's give-away advertising calendars, at their height from the 1930s to the late 1960s.
Egyptian Painted Film Poster1932–1996 · Middle East & North AfricaThe painted publicity of Egyptian cinema from the early talkies to the 1990s, designed outside the studios by artist-printers such as Hassan Mazhar Gassour and printed as colour lithographs in Cairo.
Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster1932–1989 · Eastern Europe, Central Europe, East Asia, Southeast AsiaThe official art doctrine of the Soviet Union from 1932, later exported across the socialist world, which replaced avant-garde experiment with legible, heroic realism 'national in form, socialist in content'.
Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)1933–1945 · East AsiaLuxury photo-propaganda magazines that imperial Japan sent abroad, 1934–45.
Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance)1947–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America & CaribbeanThe photo-romance of the Italian women's weeklies: a melodrama told in staged photographs, first printed by Il mio sogno and Bolero Film in May 1947 and copied from France to Brazil.
Argentine Adventure Historieta (Oesterheld–Breccia)1948–1996 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe adult adventure comics of Buenos Aires newsstand magazines, from Misterix (1948) and Oesterheld's Hora Cero (1957) to Skorpio and Fierro; the humour line of Patoruzú, Rico Tipo and Mafalda is another tradition.
Bonelli Fumetto (Italian Popular Adventure Comics)1948–present · Southern EuropeThe house format of Milan's Bonelli publishing house and its imitators (Tex, Zagor, Dylan Dog, Nathan Never): monthly newsstand paperbacks of 16 x 21 cm with about a hundred black-and-white pages, each a long episode of a serial hero.
Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism1951–1965 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe picture magazine of Black urban Africa in the 1950s.
Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve1968–1983 · Western EuropeThe sleeves the London studio Hipgnosis made for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and others from 1968 to 1983.
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)1974–1987 · Western Europe, North AmericaThe adult science-fiction comics of Métal hurlant, the Paris magazine founded in 1974 by Mœbius, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Bernard Farkas.
Matatu & Nganya Art1990–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe commissioned livery of Kenya's privately owned minibus taxis, at its most elaborate the Nairobi nganya.
Nigerian Pentecostal Crusade Poster & Billboard1990–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe roadside adverts of Nigeria's Pentecostal and independent churches: billboards, banners and posters on poles, walls and bridges announcing crusades, revivals, conventions and night vigils.
Skeuomorphic UI2000–2013 · Global / networkedInterface design that imitates physical materials and objects (stitched leather, linen, wooden shelves, brushed aluminium, felt, paper and glass) so that digital tools look and behave like their real-world counterparts.
Tamil Nadu Flex Banners2000–present · South AsiaThe digitally printed vinyl boards, locally called flex banners, that fan clubs, party cadres, businesses and families have put up along the roads of Tamil Nadu since about 2000, as flex displaced hand-painted cinema banners and cut-outs over the following decade.
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.
YouTube Thumbnail Style (the 'YouTube Face')2012–present · North America, Global / networkedThe custom thumbnail of YouTube's creator economy: a 16:9 still made to be read at fingernail size in a feed of recommendations.
'Good Morning' Greeting Images (WhatsApp Forward Vernacular)2013–present · South Asia, Latin America & CaribbeanThe ready-made greeting pictures that millions of smartphone users, many of them older and new to the internet, forward to family, friends and groups each morning on WhatsApp, above all in India and Brazil.
Generative-AI Image Aesthetic2022–present · Global / networkedThe house look of pictures synthesised by text-to-image diffusion models since 2022.

Styles that often use it 51

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

Styles that use it now and then 54

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.

Painterly illustrationin 84 of 133
All capsin 90 of 133
Illusion of depthin 61 of 133
Full bleedin 71 of 133
Agitational & persuasivein 67 of 133
Framed panelsin 86 of 133

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in form & shape