Tone & intent · Emotion
Romantic & sensual
Beauty, longing, the body and nature.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under tone & intent: what should the work make people feel or do?
- styles make it
- 83
- as a defining choice
- 10
- as a usual one
- 39
- now and then
- 34
- avoid it
- 4
Styles defined by it 10
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting)The court book painting of Iran and Timurid Herat, formed in Mongol Tabriz from Islamic, Byzantine and Chinese models: from Rashid al-Din's Jamiʿ al-tawarikh (1314) and the Great Mongol Shahnama to Behzad's Herat and the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, ending in the album pages of Safavid Isfahan.
- Persian Nastaʿlīq Calligraphy (Qiṭʿa, Chalipa and Siyāh-mashq)The 'hanging' script of Persian poetry and an art of the single sheet.
Art NouveauAn international 'new art' that sought a modern style free of historical revival, drawing its forms from plant growth and the female figure.
- 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.
Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)The 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.
Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)Mexico's give-away advertising calendars, at their height from the 1930s to the late 1960s.
Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance)The 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.
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.
Modern Calligraphy and Brush LetteringThe loose pointed-pen and brush-pen script of wedding stationery and the 2010s craft boom.
Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)The illustrated cover of the contemporary romantic comedy: a couple drawn as flat cartoon figures with simplified faces, from silhouettes and hidden faces to a few cartoon features, caught in one gesture that states the premise, on a single saturated ground of teal, pink, yellow or purple, under a hand-lettered title so large that the figures often lean on it.
Styles that often use it 39
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
Mithila (Madhubani) PaintingWomen's ritual wall and floor painting from Mithila in north Bihar and Nepal's Terai, attested from at least the 14th century, seen by W.
Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram)A European book genre in which, from Chrestien Wechel's Paris edition of 1534 on, every page or opening repeats one fixed unit: a short motto, an allegorical picture and an explanatory verse, which only together yield a moral, amorous or religious meaning.
Rinpa & Saga-bonA Kyoto school of decorative design that revived the poetry and court painting of the Heian period, begun around 1600 by the calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu and the painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu and carried on less by teaching than by admiration across generations: Ogata Kōrin, Sakai Hōitsu, Kamisaka Sekka.
Ukiyo-e Woodblock PrintsMass-produced Edo-period woodblock prints of actors, courtesans, legends and landscapes, designed by an artist, cut and printed by specialist craftsmen and sold cheaply by commercial publishers.
Cuban Tobacco Lithography (Habilitaciones & Marquillas)The chromolithographed dress of Havana tobacco.
Arts & Crafts MovementA British-led reform movement that answered industrial shoddiness with honest handcraft, medieval models and the ideal of joy in labour.
JaponismeThe Western absorption of Japanese woodblock prints, textiles and crafts after Japan reopened to trade in the 1850s.
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.
- Indian Calendar & Bazaar ArtMass-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)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.
- Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)The flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament.
- 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.
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.
Expressionist Woodcut GraphicsThe graphic arm of German Expressionism, from Die Brücke in Dresden (1905) to the Berlin journals Der Sturm and Die Aktion and Frans Masereel's woodcut novels.
- Bezalel SchoolThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
Shanghai Modern & YuefenpaiThe commercial art of treaty-port Shanghai.
Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil)The book and magazine design of the Czech Devětsil circle, where Karel Teige and his colleagues turned constructivist tools (asymmetry, sans and slab capitals, heavy bars, photomontage) toward Poetism's lyrical celebration of travel, cinema, jazz and the circus.
Republican Chinese Book Cover Design (Lu Xun & Tao Yuanqing)The covers of China's New Literature.
Surrealist GraphicsLaunched by André Breton's 1924 manifesto, Surrealism sought the marvellous in dreams, chance and the unconscious.
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.
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.
Hand-Painted Bollywood PosterThe painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s.
- Onitsha Market PamphletsCheap, 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.
- Pakistani Truck ArtThe total decoration of Pakistan's trucks and buses, which grew from company marks and saints' portraits painted in the late 1940s into a workshop art in which painters, metalworkers, woodcarvers and reflective-tape specialists collaborate on each vehicle.
ECM Sleeve Aesthetic (Munich)The cover language of the Munich label ECM, made since 1970 by Barbara Wojirsch, Dieter Rehm and later Sascha Kleis and Mayo Bucher with co-founder Manfred Eicher.
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.
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.
- Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD.
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).
- 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).
Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi)Brush-written Hangul made for commerce, not the scroll.
Korean Webtoon GraphicsThe full-colour, vertical-scroll comic that Korean web portals made standard in the 2000s and smartphone apps took worldwide.
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.
Generative-AI Image AestheticThe house look of pictures synthesised by text-to-image diffusion models since 2022.
Styles that use it now and then 34
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)1626–present
- Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)1843–2012
- Lira Popular (Chilean Illustrated Verse Broadsheets)1866–1930
- Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth)1886–present
- Fileteado Porteño1890–present
- German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)1895–1933
- Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954
- Art Deco1910–1939
- Hungarian Revolutionary Poster1912–1919
- Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography1918–1932
- Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)1929–present
- Bengali Modernist Book Cover (Prachchhad)1943–present
- Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)1947–present
- Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism1951–1965
- Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism)1951–present
- Saul and Elaine Bass Conceptual Film Graphics1954–1995
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)1962–1985
- Woodland School (Legend Painting)1962–present
- Tropicália Graphic Design1964–1975
- Angura Theatre Poster1965–1985
- Palestinian Resistance Poster1965–1993
- Psychedelic Poster1965–1973
- Soviet Central Asian Ornamental Modernism1966–1999
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve1968–1983
- Kawaii Design1970–present
- Kinshasa Popular Painting1970–present
- Lebanese Civil War Party Poster1975–1990
- ACT UP & Gran Fury AIDS Activist Graphics1987–1995
- Global Village Coffeehouse1988–2003
- Nollywood Video Jacket & Film Poster1992–present
- Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)2011–present
- Lo-fi Anime Aesthetic2017–present
- Book Blob (Abstract Colour-Blob Literary Fiction Cover)2019–2023
- 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.
- Painterly illustrationin 60 of 83
- Floral & vegetalin 41 of 83
- Naturalistic depictionin 49 of 83
- Ornamented displayin 38 of 83
- Gradientsin 36 of 83
- Biomorphic curvesin 37 of 83
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.