Colour · Key & temperature
Pastel
Light, softened tints.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under colour: what is the colour strategy?
- styles make it
- 57
- as a defining choice
- 5
- as a usual one
- 24
- now and then
- 28
- avoid it
- 46
Styles defined by it 5
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
- Taishō Roman & Lyrical IllustrationThe lyrical illustration (jojōga) of late-Meiji to early-Shōwa Japan, led by Takehisa Yumeji: willowy, large-eyed women in kimono drawn with an Art Nouveau contour, set among camellias and kimono patterns and lettered by hand.
Kawaii DesignJapan's culture of cuteness, which grew from 1970s teenage rounded handwriting and shōjo fancy goods into a global design language through Sanrio, character merchandise and emoji.
VaporwaveAn internet-born microgenre and visual aesthetic that remixes the debris of late-20th-century consumer culture (Windows 95 dialogs, classical busts, palm trees, mall interiors, Japanese text, early 3D renders) in pastel pinks and cyans.
DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial MinimalismThe friendly, frictionless minimalism of 2010s direct-to-consumer start-ups, built for the phone screen, the Instagram feed and the unboxing.
Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics)The text-led explainer slideshows that filled Instagram after George Floyd's murder in May 2020.
Styles that often use it 24
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
- Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)A kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting.
Lotería Card Imagery (Mexican Lotería)The picture deck of Mexico's lotería, a bingo-like game of chance.
Art NouveauAn international 'new art' that sought a modern style free of historical revival, drawing its forms from plant growth and the female figure.
- Glasgow StyleGlasgow's distinctive answer to Art Nouveau, formed around Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret and Frances Macdonald and Herbert MacNair at the Glasgow School of Art.
Shanghai Modern & YuefenpaiThe commercial art of treaty-port Shanghai.
- Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)Luxury photo-propaganda magazines that imperial Japan sent abroad, 1934–45.
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).
Thaw Modernism (Soviet and Czechoslovak)The light, stylised modernism that replaced Socialist Realist illusionism and Stalinist pomp in Soviet and Czechoslovak graphic and applied design, from the 1956 Secret Speech, the 1957 Moscow youth festival and Expo 58 to the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 (a political cut-off; the manner ran on into the 1970s).
Shōjo Manga (Japanese Girls' Comics)The look of Japan's girls' comics (strictly a readership, not a style), which Takahashi Macoto fixed in 1958 from the lyrical illustration (jojōga) of Nakahara Jun'ichi and the Year 24 Group remade in the 1970s.
Munich 1972 Olympic Design (Otl Aicher)The visual programme Otl Aicher's department made for the 1972 Munich Olympics, the 'cheerful Games' meant to show a democratic, modest West Germany.
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.
City Pop IllustrationThe painted look of Japanese city pop record sleeves and magazine covers, fixed by Hiroshi Nagai's sleeve for Eiichi Ohtaki's A Long Vacation (1981) and Eizin Suzuki's for Tatsuro Yamashita's For You (1982).
Memphis DesignThe Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own.
- Cartonera Books (Latin American Cardboard Publishing)Books 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.
Modern Calligraphy and Brush LetteringThe loose pointed-pen and brush-pen script of wedding stationery and the 2010s craft boom.
Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)The 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.
- '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.
Data HumanismAn information-design approach that draws data rather than charting it, treating numbers as personal, approximate and human.
- Lo-fi Anime AestheticThe look of YouTube's 24/7 lo-fi hip hop streams.
Extinction Rebellion GraphicsThe visual identity of Extinction Rebellion, the climate movement founded in Stroud in 2018, built by its volunteer Art Group as a free kit anyone may print.
NeumorphismA short-lived interface trend in which controls are extruded from, or pressed into, a background of the same colour and modelled only by paired soft shadows.
Weirdcore & DreamcoreAn internet aesthetic popularised on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube in the early 2020s, with dreamcore as its softer, pastel, cloud-filled sister.
Claymorphism & Soft 3DA soft, toy-like 3D look from product design around 2020, given the name 'claymorphism' in a December 2021 article by Michał Malewicz.
- Neo-BrutalismA friendly, commercial descendant of web brutalism that keeps its blunt boxes but adds candy colour: thick black outlines, hard unblurred offset shadows, flat saturated fills and chunky sans-serif type on conventional, usable layouts.
Styles that use it now and then 28
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting)c. 1300–1700
- Persian Nastaʿlīq Calligraphy (Qiṭʿa, Chalipa and Siyāh-mashq)c. 1400–present
- Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)1845–present
- Mir iskusstva Book Art1898–1927
- Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954
- Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)1922–1929
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line)1929–present
- Streamline Moderne1930–1945
- Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu)1950–present
- Minimalist Graphic Design1965–present
- Amar Chitra Katha Comics1967–present
- Swiss Punk / New Wave Typography1968–1990
- ECM Sleeve Aesthetic (Munich)1969–present
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)1977–1990
- Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present
- Natural Wine Label Art2007–present
- Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry)2008–present
- Low Poly Illustration2012–present
- Hong Kong Protest Art (Umbrella Movement to the 2019–20 Protests)2014–2020
- Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)2016–present
- VTuber Avatar and Stream Graphics2016–present
- Corporate Memphis2017–present
- Newtro (Korean New-Retro)2017–present
- NFT Profile-Picture Collections (CryptoPunks to Bored Apes)2017–present
- Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)2018–present
- Book Blob (Abstract Colour-Blob Literary Fiction Cover)2019–2023
- Glassmorphism2020–present
- Woman, Life, Freedom Protest Graphics (Iran and the Diaspora)2022–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Web & CSSin 25 of 57
- Warm & approachablein 30 of 57
- Gradientsin 26 of 57
- Romantic & sensualin 24 of 57
- Painterly illustrationin 32 of 57
- Wide letterspacingin 16 of 57
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.
- European Heraldryc. 1140–present
- Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Traditionc. 1180–present
- Sápmi Graphic Identity (Duodji & Gákti Colour Code)1600–present
- Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji)1779–present
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)1880–1922
- Fileteado Porteño1890–present
- Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau)1892–1914
- Guna Mola1900–present
- Expressionist Woodcut Graphics1905–1925
- Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk1912–present
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) Graphics1921–1927
- Mavo1923–1925
- Taller de Gráfica Popular1937–1977
- Ndebele Geometric Painting1940–present
- Argentine Adventure Historieta (Oesterheld–Breccia)1948–1996
- Hong Kong Neon & Beiwei Shop-Sign Lettering1950–present
- Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism1956–1967
- Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco)1960–1968
- Tropicália Graphic Design1964–1975
- Chilean Unidad Popular & Nueva Canción Graphics1967–1973
- Picó Sound-System Painting (Colombian Caribbean)1967–present
- AfriCOBRA1968–present
- Tingatinga Painting1968–present
- Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)1968–present
- Pop Achorado (Peruvian Agrarian Reform Posters)1969–1975
- Afrofuturist Design1970–present
- Australian Poster Collective Screenprints1971–1994
- Roots Reggae Sleeve Art & Rasta Iconography1973–1985
- Afrobeat Sleeve Art1974–present
- Ethiopian Revolutionary Poster (Derg Era)1974–1991
- Lebanese Civil War Party Poster1975–1990
- Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988
- Chicha Poster1980–present
- NSK Retro-Avant-Garde1980–present
- Demoscene Graphics (Cracktros, Demos & Text-Mode Art)1985–present
- Ghanaian Movie Poster1985–2005
- Black Metal Graphics1990–present
- Grunge Typography1990–2000
- Fantasy User Interface (FUI) & Sci-Fi HUD1999–present
- Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)2006–present
- Synthwave / Outrun2006–present
- Hipster Artisanal Revival2007–2018
- Plain Tobacco Packaging2012–present
- YouTube Thumbnail Style (the 'YouTube Face')2012–present
- Acid Graphics / New Ugly2016–present
- Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh Graphics2021–present