Surface & texture · Print artefacts
Photocopy & distress
Xerox degradation, toner, torn and pasted edges.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under surface & texture: what is the material finish?
- styles make it
- 21
- as a defining choice
- 3
- as a usual one
- 5
- now and then
- 13
- avoid it
- 32
Styles defined by it 3
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
- 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.
Grunge TypographyThe 1990s magazine and music-industry style in which type was layered, eroded, overlapped and cropped until legibility became negotiable.
Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)The street graphics of Chile's popular revolt, from 18 October 2019 to the March 2020 lockdowns, when a leaderless movement covered Santiago's Plaza de la Dignidad, the Alameda and other cities' walls.
Styles that often use it 5
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
La Movida Madrileña GraphicsThe graphics of Madrid's Movida, the post-Franco scene of new-wave bands, fanzines and night life usually dated from the Canito concert of 9 February 1980 and later backed by the city council.
Stencil Street ArtPictures cut rather than drawn: a photograph is reduced to two or three flat tones, cut into card and sprayed onto a wall, usually uninvited, so one hard-edged figure appears in the street, in black with at most one accent colour.
ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist GraphicsThe graphics of New York's AIDS activist movement: the SILENCE=DEATH poster of 1987, a pink triangle above white capitals on black, and the posters, stickers, T-shirts, billboards and bus ads of Gran Fury (1988–1995), ACT UP's 'unofficial propaganda ministry'.
- 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).
- 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.
Styles that use it now and then 13
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Dada1916–1924
- West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)1953–1990
- Situationist Détournement Graphics1956–1972
- Dazibao (Big-Character Posters)1957–1980
- Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography1980–1998
- NSK Retro-Avant-Garde1980–present
- Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics1980–1989
- South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi)1995–present
- Cartonera Books (Latin American Cardboard Publishing)2003–present
- Hipster Artisanal Revival2007–2018
- Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014
- Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)2011–2024
- Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)2018–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Rebellious & subversivein 20 of 21
- Ironic & self-awarein 17 of 21
- Found & vernacular imageryin 16 of 21
- Collage & layeringin 17 of 21
- Treated photographyin 15 of 21
- Photomontagein 14 of 21
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.
- Art Deco1910–1939
- Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai1910–1949
- Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)1929–1959
- AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)1930–1938
- Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)1933–1945
- Japanese Postwar Modernism1950–1990
- Corporate Identity Modernism1955–1990
- Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)1956–present
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)1962–1985
- Hong Kong East–West Graphic Modernism1964–present
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve1968–1983
- Afrofuturist Design1970–present
- Kawaii Design1970–present
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)1977–1990
- Techno-Futurist Graphics1986–2002
- Superflat1993–present
- Frutiger Aero2004–2013
- Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics)2005–present
- Modern Calligraphy and Brush Lettering2005–present
- DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism2012–2022
- YouTube Thumbnail Style (the 'YouTube Face')2012–present
- 'Good Morning' Greeting Images (WhatsApp Forward Vernacular)2013–present
- Material Design2014–present
- 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
- Extinction Rebellion Graphics2018–present
- Guochao (China-Chic National Trend)2018–present
- Glassmorphism2020–present
- Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics)2020–present
- Generative-AI Image Aesthetic2022–present