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Imagery · Without pictures

Typography only

No pictures; type carries everything.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under imagery: what kind of pictures, if any?

styles make it: 119
as a defining choice: 31
as a usual one: 53
now and then: 35
avoid it: 34

Styles defined by it 31

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

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke)c. 0–present · East AsiaThe written art of China and the root of East Asian lettering.
Hebrew Micrographyc. 895–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA Jewish scribal art in which lines of minute Hebrew script, usually the Masoretic notes that guard the biblical text, are written so that the line itself draws: interlaced frames and star rosettes on full carpet pages, and animals, knights, fish and grotesques in the margins.
Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)c. 900–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe family of Arabic scripts of al-Andalus and North Africa, descended from early Kufic bookhands.
Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)c. 960–present · East AsiaThe page and letter of the East Asian book.
Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)c. 1100–present · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaSquare Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it.
Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)c. 1230–present · Eastern Europe, Southern EuropeCyrillic letters bound into one even band of ornament.
Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphyc. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South AsiaThe Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it.
Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)1500–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southeast AsiaPictorial writing in which the strokes of a devotional text form one figure: a lion of ʿAli built from the Nad-e ʿAli prayer, a galleon whose hull spells the names of the Seven Sleepers, a peacock, a Sufi cap.
Neoclassical Book Typography1757–1830 · Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central EuropeThe Enlightenment book stripped of Renaissance woodcut decoration.
Edo-moji Commercial Lettering (Kanteiryū, Yose-moji, Sumō-ji)1779–present · East AsiaThe fat, ink-heavy brush hands that Edo's professional sign and bill writers made for the city's entertainments: Kanteiryū for kabuki signboards and playbills from 1779, yose-moji for rakugo halls, sumō-ji for sumo ranking sheets, and squarish kago-moji for votive name slips.
Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing1822–1956 · Middle East & North AfricaThe page of the Arabic printed book as Egypt's state press at Bulaq shaped it from 1822: justified blocks of black Naskh type on pale paper, often boxed in a ruled frame, with an ornamental headpiece on the opening page, headings set larger or in a second script such as Nastaʿlīq, and almost no pictures.
Urdu Katib Lithography1837–present · South AsiaFor about a century and a half Urdu chose lithography over movable type, because metal type could not reproduce the sloping, stacked ligatures of Nastaʿlīq.
Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type)1864–present · South AsiaDevanagari as Javaji Dadaji's Bombay type foundry (1864) and Nirnaya Sagar Press (1869) cut and printed it: upright metal type with a strong headline, cut with the punch-cutter Ranoji Aru, and enough conjunct and 'Akhand' sorts to set Sanskrit, Vedic accents and Marathi whole.
Amazonian Boat Lettering (Abridores de Letras)1925–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted boat names of Pará's rivers in the Brazilian Amazon, made for about a century by self-taught riverside painters (abridores de letras).
Penguin Paperback Design (Three Bands to the Marber Grid)1935–1972 · Western EuropeThe cover system of Penguin Books, London, from 1935 until Germano Facetti left in 1972.
Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type1947–present · Middle East & North AfricaArabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen.
Dazibao (Big-Character Posters)1957–1980 · East AsiaHandwritten wall posters in large brush characters that turned the walls of Mao-era China into a public forum for criticism, denunciation and, at the Democracy Wall, dissent.
Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)1962–1985 · North AmericaThe display typography of the phototype era, led in New York by Herb Lubalin, his lettering partners John Pistilli, Tom Carnase and Tony DiSpigna, and the International Typeface Corporation.
Baybayin Revival Graphics1963–present · Southeast Asia, North AmericaThe revival of baybayin, the precolonial Tagalog abugida, as a mark of Filipino identity.
Total Design & Dutch Functionalism1963–1990 · Western EuropeThe Dutch strand of systematic modernism took shape when Wim Crouwel, Benno Wissing, Friso Kramer and Paul and Dick Schwarz founded Total Design in Amsterdam in 1963 as the country's first multidisciplinary studio.
Chicha Poster1980–present · Latin America & CaribbeanFluorescent screen-printed street posters that emerged in the 1980s to promote chicha (Andean cumbia) concerts in Lima, made by printers from Andean migrant communities.
Jamaican Dancehall Signs & Sleeve Art1980–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe street graphics of Jamaica's dancehall era.
Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)1980–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe name-writing of São Paulo's pixadores, which since the 1980s has covered walls and façades and, from the 1990s, the upper floors of tower blocks.
Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)1985–present · Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedOne fixed page for the Qur'an across much of the Muslim world: Uthman Taha's fully vowelled Naskh in fifteen justified lines, written so that every page ends at the end of a verse (the late Ottoman âyet-berkenar layout), inside a floral frame, with sura titles in framed cartouches and verse numbers in small round medallions.
Out-of-Square Hangul Typography1985–present · East AsiaA Korean typographic movement that frees Hangul from the equal square in which metal and photo type had always set each syllable.
Hype Streetwear Graphics (Box Logo to Quotation Marks)1993–present · North America, East Asia, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Global / networkedThe logo-led graphics of streetwear since the 1990s: one wordmark or emblem on a plain T-shirt, hoodie or object is the product.
Arabic Calligraffiti2002–present · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Global / networkedArabic letters sprayed, rolled and brushed at the scale of buildings.
Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design2004–present · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Global / networkedA twenty-first-century type culture that redraws Arabic as a family matched to a Latin companion in weight, proportion and contrast, so the two scripts can share a page, screen or sign as equals.
Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)2005–present · East AsiaGraphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small.
GOV.UK Design (GDS Style)2012–present · Western EuropeThe text-led design of GOV.UK, the UK government's single website, built by the Government Digital Service from 2012 and codified in the GOV.UK Design System (2018).
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.

Styles that often use it 53

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

Styles that use it now and then 35

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.

Type as imagein 75 of 119
Monochromein 81 of 119
Limited spot coloursin 96 of 119
Rotated & vertical settingin 52 of 119
Non-representationalin 56 of 119
Rectilinearin 60 of 119

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in imagery