Medium & production · Environment & craft
Textile & craft
Weaving, dyeing, embroidery and applied craft.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under medium & production: what technology shaped it?
- styles make it
- 81
- as a defining choice
- 19
- as a usual one
- 25
- now and then
- 37
- avoid it
- 0
Styles defined by it 19
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
Amazigh Sign System & TifinaghThe visual language shared by Amazigh communities from the Rif, Atlas and Kabylie to the Aurès and the Tuareg Sahara.
Andean Woven Graphic SystemsThe graphic systems of Andean cloth, the region's most prestigious medium, in which every motif is built on the warp-and-weft grid.
Kamon (Japanese Family Crests)Japan's family crests: small one-colour emblems that reduce a plant, animal, tool or pattern to a flat silhouette, mirrored or repeated around a centre, often ringed and drawn with compass and brush.
Batik Pattern TraditionThe Javanese wax-resist textile tradition in which hot wax is drawn with a canting or stamped with a copper cap, then dyed in successive baths to build layered all-over patterns.
- Sápmi Graphic Identity (Duodji & Gákti Colour Code)Duodji is Sámi handicraft: hard work in wood, horn and bone, soft work in skin and cloth; drums painted with alder-bark figures survive from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Adinkra & Kente Symbol SystemsThe Akan textile languages of Ghana.
Diné (Navajo) Weaving DesignThe tapestry-woven design tradition of Diné (Navajo) weavers, recorded in Spanish sources from the early 18th century.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) DesignBarkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures.
Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)The company flags (frankaa) of the Fante asafo, the old warrior companies of Ghana's central coast, widely adopted from the mid-nineteenth century.
- African Wax & Fancy PrintIndustrially printed cotton made for West and Central African markets, first by Dutch and British mills that imitated Javanese batik with resin resist, and later by African mills.
- 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.
Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth)Printed cotton wraps worn by women of the Swahili coast and its hinterland since the late nineteenth century, bought in pairs.
Bògòlanfini Mud ClothThe mud-dyed cotton cloth of the Bamana and other Malian peoples, in which the ground rather than the motif is painted: cloth dyed yellow with n'gallama leaves is covered around each sign with fermented iron-rich mud, and the unpainted signs are then bleached pale.
- Guna MolaThe reverse-appliqué blouse panels of Guna women in Panama, made by cutting through two to seven stacked layers of cotton so that every shape is ringed by echoing bands of the colours beneath.
Taiwan Floral Cloth (Huabu)Cheap printed cotton covered edge to edge in large, full-blown peonies with lotuses, phoenixes, dragons, mandarin ducks, small florets and auspicious emblems on saturated vermilion, bright pink or sky-blue grounds.
Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism)The printed-cotton modernism of Marimekko, founded in Helsinki in 1951 by Armi and Viljo Ratia out of Viljo's printing firm Printex.
- Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)The graphic language of Italy's organised football supporters, the ultras, from the late 1960s, and of the groups that copied them across Europe, North Africa and beyond.
Hype Streetwear Graphics (Box Logo to Quotation Marks)The logo-led graphics of streetwear since the 1990s: one wordmark or emblem on a plain T-shirt, hoodie or object is the product.
Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave)The graphics of Latin America's feminist tide, a mass movement since Ni Una Menos (Buenos Aires, 3 June 2015) and the 2018 'marea verde' for legal abortion, though its scarf dates from 2003.
Styles that often use it 25
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
Chinese Paper-Cut (Jianzhi)China's folk art of cut paper, made mostly by rural women and passed from mother to daughter, and by town guilds and workshops.
European HeraldryThe hereditary identifying devices of medieval Europe's knights and seals, codified into a rule-bound grammar still used by states, cities, churches, universities and families.
Mongol Bichig Calligraphy & Ugalz OrnamentMongolia's classical script and the auspicious ornament that frames it on state, Buddhist and household objects.
Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)Cyrillic letters bound into one even band of ornament.
- Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)Tibetan Buddhist and Bön woodblock printing, from the first printed Kangyur (1410, cut in China) and the 15th-century presses of Gungthang to the great printing houses of Narthang, Derge and Lhasa.
- Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)The visual language of Javanese shadow puppets: flat figures cut from buffalo parchment, with head and legs in profile, shoulders turned to the front and long jointed arms worked by horn rods.
- Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori DesignToi Māori, the visual arts of the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, of which kōwhaiwhai, the painted scroll patterns of paddles and meeting-house rafters, is the most graphic strand.
Ma & Wabi-sabi AestheticsA Japanese aesthetic rooted in Zen and the wabi tea ceremony that prizes austerity, imperfection, impermanence and the charged interval (ma) between things.
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.
- Northwest Coast Formline DesignThe two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast nations, painted, carved and woven onto boxes, house fronts, robes and hats, and printed as serigraphs since the 1960s.
- Thai Yantra (Yant) DiagramsThai protective diagrams in which Pali formulae, written in Khom, a sacred script derived from Khmer, are packed into squares, circles, triangles, spires and the outlines of Buddhas, monks and tigers, often framed by lines of script.
Arts & Crafts MovementA British-led reform movement that answered industrial shoddiness with honest handcraft, medieval models and the ideal of joy in labour.
Nieuwe Kunst (Dutch Art Nouveau)The Dutch branch of Art Nouveau, seen mostly in book covers, vignettes and posters.
Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign TraditionTwo linked graphic languages of southeastern Nigeria.
- Bezalel SchoolThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
- Ndebele Geometric PaintingThe mural tradition of Southern Ndebele women, who paint homestead walls and gateways, and later canvases and objects, with bold, symmetrical geometric designs.
Afrofuturist DesignA visual language of Black futures that fuses African and diasporic iconography (pyramids and ankhs, Adinkra and Nsibidi glyphs, textile patterning) with spacecraft, cosmic fields and technology.
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.
- Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)Urban Indian gift and T-shirt design from the late 1990s into the 2010s that recasts the street and bazaar as ironic, affectionate icons: truck tails and 'Horn OK Please', auto-rickshaws, Ambassadors and Chetaks, cutting chai, old Bollywood stills and dialogues, Bhagat Singh in place of Che.
Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)Japan's local mascots: characters commissioned by prefectures, towns and tourism bodies to stand for a place, named yuru-kyara ('loose characters') by the illustrator Jun Miura around 2000.
- Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China')Chinese book design since 2003, when Shanghai founded the yearly 'Most Beautiful Books of China' award, whose winners go on to Leipzig.
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.
Guochao (China-Chic National Trend)A Chinese branding and fashion trend, usually dated from Li-Ning's 'China Li-Ning' show at New York Fashion Week in February 2018, that redraws heritage motifs as finishes for sneakers, apparel, cosmetics and museum merchandise.
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.
- Palestinian Watermelon and Keffiyeh GraphicsGraphics of Palestinian identity and of solidarity with Palestinians, made by Palestinian artists, the diaspora and supporters worldwide and shared mainly online, above all since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
Styles that use it now and then 37
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Traditionc. 690–present
- Mithila (Madhubani) Paintingc. 1350–present
- Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)1500–present
- Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting1776–present
- Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji)1779–present
- Japonisme1860–1910
- Celtic Revival Illumination & Lettering1861–1951
- Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino)1879–present
- Glasgow Style1890–1914
- Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration1910–1940
- Suprematism1915–1925
- Bauhaus1919–1933
- Scandinavian Functionalism1930–present
- Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop)1934–present
- Pakistani Truck Art1947–present
- Op Art Graphics1960–1975
- Baybayin Revival Graphics1963–present
- Mexico 68 Olympic & Metro Identity1966–1970
- Munich 1972 Olympic Design (Otl Aicher)1966–1972
- Picó Sound-System Painting (Colombian Caribbean)1967–present
- AfriCOBRA1968–present
- Kawaii Design1970–present
- Warli Painting1970–present
- Australian Poster Collective Screenprints1971–1994
- Western Desert Iconography1971–present
- NSK Retro-Avant-Garde1980–present
- Solidarność & Polish Underground Graphics1980–1989
- Ghanaian Movie Poster1985–2005
- Superflat1993–present
- Indonesian Woodcut Activism (Taring Padi)1998–present
- Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics2001–present
- Modern Calligraphy and Brush Lettering2005–present
- Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)2006–present
- Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)2011–2024
- Data Humanism2014–present
- Hong Kong Protest Art (Umbrella Movement to the 2019–20 Protests)2014–2020
- Ukrainian Wartime Graphics (Saint Javelin, War Stamps and Be Brave Like Ukraine)2022–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Pattern & repeatin 51 of 81
- Folk & sacred symbolsin 55 of 81
- All-over fieldin 41 of 81
- Repetition & rhythmin 61 of 81
- Geometric tessellationin 31 of 81
- Abundant decorationin 37 of 81