Typography · Display & special
Ornamented display
Inline, shaded, Tuscan or fantasy display faces.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under typography: what do the letters look like, and how are they set?
- styles make it
- 101
- as a defining choice
- 10
- as a usual one
- 46
- now and then
- 45
- avoid it
- 56
Styles defined by it 10
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
Armenian Manuscript IlluminationThe illuminated books of the Armenian Church, from the Gospel of Queen Mlke (c. 862) and the Etchmiadzin Gospels (989) to the last manuscripts around 1800.
Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)Cyrillic letters bound into one even band of ornament.
Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)The chromolithographed dress of Havana tobacco.
- Amazonian Boat Lettering (Abridores de Letras)The painted boat names of Pará's rivers in the Brazilian Amazon, made for about a century by self-taught riverside painters (abridores de letras).
Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop)The mainland American fantasy of the South Seas, begun by Don the Beachcomber's Hollywood bar (about 1934) and Trader Vic's in Oakland and at its height in the Polynesian restaurants of the 1950s and 60s.
Push Pin StyleThe eclectic illustrative style of New York's Push Pin Studios, founded by Seymour Chwast, Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel.
- Mexico 68 Olympic & Metro IdentityThe graphic programme of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the city's first Metro line.
- Roots Reggae Sleeve Art & Rasta IconographyThe record sleeves of roots reggae, from Catch a Fire (1973) until dancehall took over in the 1980s.
Demoscene Graphics (Cracktros, Demos & Text-Mode Art)The graphics of the demoscene, a mainly European community of coders, graphicians and musicians that grew from the intros software crackers added to pirated Commodore 64 and Amiga games in the mid-1980s.
Matatu & Nganya ArtThe commissioned livery of Kenya's privately owned minibus taxis, at its most elaborate the Nairobi nganya.
Styles that often use it 46
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
Victorian Letterpress & Wood TypeThe commercial jobbing print of the industrial century: posters, playbills, auction notices and ephemera built from a flood of new display types (fat faces, Egyptians, grotesques, Tuscans and condensed wood type).
Celtic Revival Illumination & LetteringOrnament and lettering of the Celtic Revival in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, modelled on Insular gospel books such as Kells and on carved stone crosses.
Belle Époque Lithographic PosterThe large colour lithographic street poster that turned Paris into an open-air gallery, from Jules Chéret's first posters of 1866 to Leonetto Cappiello before the First World War.
Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino)The 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.
- 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.
Art NouveauAn international 'new art' that sought a modern style free of historical revival, drawing its forms from plant growth and the female figure.
Fileteado PorteñoA Buenos Aires tradition of ornamental brush painting that began around 1900 on the grey-painted trade carts of Italian immigrant coachbuilders and spread to trucks, colectivo buses, shop signs and gallery panels.
Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau)The Dutch branch of Art Nouveau, seen mostly in book covers, vignettes and posters.
Vienna SecessionThe Viennese break with academic art led by Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and Alfred Roller, which pulled Art Nouveau toward the square, the grid and the flat plane.
Mir iskusstva Book ArtThe graphic idiom of the St Petersburg World of Art circle (journal 1898–1904, exhibitions until Paris 1927) and the book artists around it.
- Bezalel SchoolThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
Art DecoThe glamorous modern style named after the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which disciplined ornament into geometry: sunbursts, chevrons, stepped forms and sleek stylised figures rendered in lacquer-smooth colour with metallic accents.
Shanghai Modern & YuefenpaiThe commercial art of treaty-port Shanghai.
Wendingen & Amsterdam School TypographyThe graphic language of Wendingen (1918–1932), monthly of the Amsterdam architects' society Architectura et Amicitia, and its editor H.
Filipino KomiksThe 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.
Egyptian Painted Film PosterThe 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.
American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age)The American newsstand comic book from Famous Funnies (1934) and Action Comics #1 (1938) through the Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages, and past the Bronze Age's end in 1985 until computer colour replaced hand separations in the early 1990s.
Hand-Painted Bollywood PosterThe painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Bengali Modernist Book Cover (Prachchhad)A literary book-jacket culture that began at Calcutta's Signet Press in 1943, where Satyajit Ray and later Purnendu Pattrea made the hand-drawn Bengali title the main image of the cover.
Googie & Atomic AgeThe exuberant commercial modernism of post-war American roadside culture (coffee shops, motels, car washes, bowling alleys and neon signs), named in 1952 by critic Douglas Haskell after John Lautner's Googie's coffee shop in Los Angeles (1949).
Jeepney ArtThe 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.
Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)Arabic children's comics weeklies, from Dar al-Hilal's Samir in Cairo (1956) to Abu Dhabi's Majid (1979), mixing translated Western strips with house characters by Egyptian, Lebanese, Armenian and European artists.
Op Art GraphicsA 1960s style that turned perceptual research into graphic effect: precisely drawn lines, checks, concentric rings and modular grids, usually black and white or complementaries of equal value, that seem to vibrate, swell or move.
Tropicália Graphic DesignThe 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 PosterThe concert-poster language of the 1960s counterculture, born in San Francisco's Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms and echoed in London's underground press.
- Picó Sound-System Painting (Colombian Caribbean)The hand-painted fronts of the picós, the giant sound systems that play dances in the barrios of Barranquilla and Cartagena.
Underground ComixSelf-published, adults-only comic books from the San Francisco counterculture, made outside the Comics Code on the newsstand comic's format.
Graffiti & Hip-Hop GraphicsBorn on New York's subway cars and Bronx party flyers, graffiti writing turns the writer's name into a monumental letter-sculpture: bubble, block and wildstyle letters with arrows, 3D drop shadows, fades and highlights, painted freehand in aerosol.
Turkish Weekly Humour Magazines (Gırgır to Uykusuz)Istanbul's weekly cartoon magazines, from the Aral brothers' Gırgır (1972), which sold up to about half a million copies, through the chain of breakaways that followed it: Limon, LeMan, Penguen and Uykusuz.
Afrobeat Sleeve ArtThe painted and collaged record covers of Nigerian Afrobeat, defined by Lemi Ghariokwu's sleeves for Fela Kuti from Alagbon Close (1974) onward.
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)The adult science-fiction comics of Métal hurlant, the Paris magazine founded in 1974 by Mœbius, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Bernard Farkas.
- Chicha PosterFluorescent screen-printed street posters that emerged in the 1980s to promote chicha (Andean cumbia) concerts in Lima, made by printers from Andean migrant communities.
Jamaican Dancehall Signs & Sleeve ArtThe street graphics of Jamaica's dancehall era.
Global Village CoffeehouseThe faux-naive, earth-toned illustration style that late-1980s American designers set against Memphis, and that chain cafés, bookstores, packaging and clip art spread through the 1990s.
Rave & Acid House GraphicsThe pocket-sized promotional art of acid house, rave and early techno, handed out in record shops and car parks to advertise all-night parties.
- Nigerian Pentecostal Crusade Poster & BillboardThe 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.
Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie PosterHand-pulled, numbered screenprints that revived the rock poster in Austin from 1991, led by Frank Kozik, and spread via Flatstock fairs and, from 2004, Mondo to 'alternative' film posters, for collectors as much as the show.
- Nollywood Video Jacket & Film PosterThe cover and poster art of Nigeria's home-video boom, from Living in Bondage (1992) on.
Early Web VernacularThe amateur web of the mid-1990s to early 2000s, when millions of people hand-coded personal homepages on free hosts such as GeoCities with table layouts, browser-default fonts, tiled backgrounds, animated GIFs, MIDI soundtracks, hit counters and ‘under construction’ signs.
- Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)Urban 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.
- Tamil Nadu Flex BannersThe 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.
Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics)Private cars, motorbikes and bicycles that Japanese fans of anime, manga and games cover with their favourite characters, named by the mid-2000s with the self-mocking word itasha, 'painful car'.
Synthwave / OutrunThe retro-futurist look of synthwave music: a 1980s revival that grew from mid-2000s French electro and online synth scenes, took its other name from Sega's arcade racer Out Run (1986) and reached the mainstream with Drive (2011).
- 'Good Morning' Greeting Images (WhatsApp Forward Vernacular)The 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.
SolarpunkHopeful eco-futurist imagery born online.
Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)A Franco-Belgian type practice that redesigns written French for gender inclusion inside the word.
Styles that use it now and then 45
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Chinese Paper-Cut (Jianzhi)c. 500–present
- Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting1776–present
- Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji)1779–present
- Imagerie d'Épinal & European Bilderbogen1796–1939
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering1800–present
- Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type)1864–present
- Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)1880–1922
- Guna Mola1900–present
- Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration1910–1940
- Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat)1919–1955
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics1921–1927
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)1922–1929
- Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)1923–1949
- Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design1925–1960
- Harlem Renaissance Graphic Art1925–1940
- Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)1929–1959
- Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)1930–1970
- Streamline Moderne1930–1945
- Hebrew Poster Lettering & Early Israeli State Design1934–1974
- Onitsha Market Pamphlets1947–1980
- Pakistani Truck Art1947–present
- Bonelli Fumetto (Italian Popular Adventure Comics)1948–present
- West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs1950–present
- Cairo–Beirut Arab Modernist Book & Periodical Design1952–1990
- Polish Cold War Neon (PRL Neonisation)1956–1981
- Cuban Revolutionary Poster (OSPAAAL & ICAIC)1960–1990
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)1962–1985
- Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)1968
- Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)1968–present
- Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters)1969–1975
- Afrofuturist Design1970–present
- Kawaii Design1970–present
- Australian Poster Collective Screenprints1971–1994
- Ghanaian Movie Poster1985–2005
- Black Metal Graphics1990–present
- Ghanaian Funeral Poster & Banner1990–present
- Bitterkomix (Afrikaans Underground Comics)1992–present
- South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi)1995–present
- Japanese Dense Web Design1999–present
- Hauntology & Ghost Box Design2004–present
- Neo-Andean Architecture (Cholets)2005–present
- Low Poly Illustration2012–present
- Newtro (Korean New-Retro)2017–present
- Generative-AI Image Aesthetic2022–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Eclectic mixingin 46 of 101
- All capsin 65 of 101
- Horror vacuiin 61 of 101
- Naturalistic depictionin 54 of 101
- Full polychromein 69 of 101
- Hard offset shadowin 30 of 101
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.
- Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)c. 960–present
- Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)c. 1410–present
- Renaissance Book Typographyc. 1460–1600
- Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics1500–present
- Arts & Crafts Movement1860–1920
- German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)1895–1933
- Vorticism & BLAST Typography1914–1920
- Bauhaus1919–1933
- Leningrad Avant-Garde Picture Book1922–1936
- Die Neue Typographie1923–1940
- Isotype Pictorial Statistics1925–1971
- Scandinavian Functionalism1930–present
- Penguin Paperback Design (Three Bands to the Marber Grid)1935–1972
- American Mid-Century Modernism1940–1970
- Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type1947–present
- International Typographic Style1950–1975
- Japanese Postwar Modernism1950–1990
- Brazilian Concrete Design1951–1975
- HfG Ulm Systematic Design1953–1968
- West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)1953–1990
- Corporate Identity Modernism1955–1990
- Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism1956–1967
- British Road Signage (Kinneir & Calvert)1958–present
- Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)1960–1974
- Iranian Modernist Graphic Design1960–present
- Indian Institutional Modernism (NID)1961–1990
- Total Design & Dutch Functionalism1963–1990
- Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism1964–present
- Minimalist Graphic Design1965–present
- Munich 1972 Olympic Design (Otl Aicher)1966–1972
- ECM Sleeve Aesthetic (Munich)1969–present
- Roman-like Thai Typography (modern loopless Thai)1973–present
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)1977–1990
- South African Resistance Poster1978–1994
- Stencil Street Art1978–present
- Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)1980–present
- Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics1980–1989
- Out-of-Square Hangul Typography1985–present
- ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics1987–1995
- Hype Streetwear Graphics (Box Logo to Quotation Marks)1993–present
- Arabic Calligraffiti2002–present
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design2004–present
- Neo-Swiss Revival2005–present
- Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)2005–present
- Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay2006–present
- Generative & Dynamic Identities2007–present
- Newsroom Data Graphics & Scrollytelling2009–present
- Flat Design2010–2016
- Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)2011–present
- Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)2011–2024
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism2012–2022
- GOV.UK Design (GDS Style)2012–present
- Plain Tobacco Packaging2012–present
- Material Design2014–present
- Dark Tech Minimalism2019–present
- Weirdcore & Dreamcore2019–present
Other choices in typography
- Humanist & Garalde serif
- Transitional serif
- Didone
- Slab serif
- Grotesque & neo-grotesque
- Geometric sans
- Humanist sans
- Rounded sans
- Blackletter
- Script
- Brush & pen calligraphy
- Hand-lettering
- Condensed display
- Stencil
- Monospace
- Bitmap & pixel
- Experimental & distorted
- All caps
- Lowercase only
- Type as image
- Flush left, ragged right
- Rotated & vertical setting
- Eclectic mixing
- Tight setting
- Wide letterspacing