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Surface & texture · Print artefacts

Paper & letterpress bite

Visible fibre, impression and ink spread.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under surface & texture: what is the material finish?

styles make it: 115
as a defining choice: 11
as a usual one: 43
now and then: 61
avoid it: 18

Styles defined by it 11

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

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.
Ma & Wabi-sabi Aesthetics1500–present · East AsiaA Japanese aesthetic rooted in Zen and the wabi tea ceremony that prizes austerity, imperfection, impermanence and the charged interval (ma) between things.
Đông Hồ & Hàng Trống Folk Prints1600–present · Southeast AsiaVietnam's two classic folk-print schools, bought for Tết. Đông Hồ families press each colour from its own carved block onto giấy điệp, dó paper brushed with ground scallop shell whose streaked, faintly sparkling surface serves as the white, and print the black line last.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design1700–present · OceaniaBarkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures.
Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type1810–1900 · Western Europe, North AmericaThe 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).
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.
Russian Futurist Book1910–1920 · Eastern EuropeThe cheap, small-run books of the Russian Cubo-Futurist poets and painters, from Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov to Goncharova, Larionov and Rozanova.
Onitsha Market Pamphlets1947–1980 · Sub-Saharan AfricaCheap, 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.
Cartonera Books (Latin American Cardboard Publishing)2003–present · Latin America & CaribbeanBooks of Latin America's cartonera presses, begun by Eloísa Cartonera in Buenos Aires in 2003 after Argentina's 2001 crash: photocopied texts stapled and glued by hand into covers cut from used boxes, usually bought from cartoneros (waste pickers) above the market price.
Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China')2003–present · East AsiaChinese book design since 2003, when Shanghai founded the yearly 'Most Beautiful Books of China' award, whose winners go on to Leipzig.

Styles that often use it 43

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

Styles that use it now and then 61

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.

Line illustrationin 92 of 115
Letterpressin 46 of 115
Monochromein 79 of 115
Carved linein 47 of 115
Woodblock & linocutin 44 of 115
Light groundin 97 of 115

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in surface & texture