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Space & hierarchy · Hierarchy

Sequential narrative

Read as a sequence or story: panels, pages, scrolling, frames.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under space & hierarchy: how is attention distributed?

styles make it: 98
as a defining choice: 27
as a usual one: 29
now and then: 42
avoid it: 2

Styles defined by it 27

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

Mixteca-Puebla Codex Paintingc. 1200–1560 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted screenfold books of Postclassic southern and central Mexico (not the Maya codices): long strips of gesso-coated deerskin, folded like a screen and painted on both sides.
Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books)1752–1885 · Southeast AsiaPainted Burmese folding books of the Konbaung court and its monasteries.
Persian Popular Narrative (Lithographs & Coffeehouse Painting)1843–2012 · Middle East & North AfricaIran's popular picture-stories in two media.
ROSTA Windows1919–1922 · Eastern EuropeHand-stencilled satirical news posters made by the Russian Telegraph Agency during the Civil War and hung in empty shop windows, first in Moscow, then in Petrograd and provincial towns.
Lianhuanhua Picture-Story Books1925–1990 · East AsiaPalm-sized Chinese picture books, about three by five inches, that tell a novel, opera, film or revolutionary story in hundreds of single framed drawings, one to a page, each with a short caption.
Filipino Komiks1929–1999 · Southeast AsiaThe 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.
Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line)1929–present · Western Europe, Southern EuropeThe comic drawing style of Hergé's Tintin and the Brussels school, named 'klare lijn' by Joost Swarte in 1977.
American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age)1934–1993 · North AmericaThe 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.
Escuela Bruguera (Spanish Humour Comics)1947–1986 · Southern EuropeThe house style of Editorial Bruguera's humour cartoonists in Barcelona from 1947 to 1986, named the 'Escuela Bruguera' by Terenci Moix in 1968.
Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance)1947–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America & CaribbeanThe 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.
Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)1947–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe black-and-white narrative comic of postwar Japan, from Tezuka Osamu's Shin Takarajima (1947) to the weekly boys' magazines of 1959 and 1968 and the paperbacks that collect them.
Argentine Adventure Historieta (Oesterheld–Breccia)1948–1996 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe adult adventure comics of Buenos Aires newsstand magazines, from Misterix (1948) and Oesterheld's Hora Cero (1957) to Skorpio and Fierro; the humour line of Patoruzú, Rico Tipo and Mafalda is another tradition.
Bonelli Fumetto (Italian Popular Adventure Comics)1948–present · Southern EuropeThe house format of Milan's Bonelli publishing house and its imitators (Tex, Zagor, Dylan Dog, Nathan Never): monthly newsstand paperbacks of 16 x 21 cm with about a hundred black-and-white pages, each a long episode of a serial hero.
Arab Children's Comic Magazines (Samir to Majid)1956–present · Middle East & North AfricaArabic 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.
Shōjo Manga (Japanese Girls' Comics)1958–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe 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.
Rorke's Drift Linocut1962–1982 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe prints of the Lutheran art centre that Swedish teachers Peder and Ulla Gowenius started at Ceza Hospital in 1962 and moved to Rorke's Drift in 1963: under apartheid, which denied Black South Africans formal fine-art education, the chief training ground for many Black artists.
Amar Chitra Katha Comics1967–present · South AsiaThe Bombay comic-book series that from 1967 retold Hindu myth and epic, Buddhist and Jain tales, saints, folk legends, the jests of the court wits Birbal and Tenali Raman, and Indian history for children, in English and Indian languages, with well over 500 titles by the early 1990s.
Underground Comix1968–1982 · North America, Western EuropeSelf-published, adults-only comic books from the San Francisco counterculture, made outside the Comics Code on the newsstand comic's format.
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)1974–1987 · Western Europe, North AmericaThe adult science-fiction comics of Métal hurlant, the Paris magazine founded in 1974 by Mœbius, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Bernard Farkas.
L'Association and French Alternative Comics1990–present · Western EuropeThe black-and-white auteur comics of L'Association, the Paris publisher founded by seven cartoonists in 1990, and the 1990s small-press scene it led.
Bitterkomix (Afrikaans Underground Comics)1992–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Afrikaans underground comics magazine founded in Stellenbosch in 1992 by Anton Kannemeyer (Joe Dog) and Conrad Botes (Konradski), with Mark Kannemeyer (Lorcan White).
Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe full-colour, vertical-scroll comic that Korean web portals made standard in the 2000s and smartphone apps took worldwide.
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.
Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)2007–present · Middle East & North AfricaAdult comics magazines edited by Arab artists' collectives since 2007, at times with a ministry grant or an NGO partner: Samandal in Beirut, TokTok in Cairo, Lab619 in Tunis and Skefkef in Casablanca.
Analog Horror Graphics2015–present · North America, Global / networkedA horror genre, mostly on YouTube, that tells its stories through imitation television and home-video graphics rather than actors: emergency-alert screens, station IDs, public-service, educational and instructional tapes, set between the 1960s and early 2000s.
Kinetic Typography & Variable Type2016–present · Global / networked, North America, Western EuropeTypography as the moving image: letterforms that stretch, squash, rotate and morph along variable-font axes, loop seamlessly and cut to the beat of music, used for identities, social-media posters and digital out-of-home screens.
Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics)2020–present · North America, Global / networkedThe text-led explainer slideshows that filled Instagram after George Floyd's murder in May 2020.

Styles that often use it 29

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

Styles that use it now and then 42

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.

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in space & hierarchy