Space & hierarchy · Rhythm & depth
Visual tension
Deliberate instability: crowded edges, clashes, near-collisions.
A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under space & hierarchy: how is attention distributed?
- styles make it
- 62
- as a defining choice
- 6
- as a usual one
- 24
- now and then
- 32
- avoid it
- 15
Styles defined by it 6
For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.
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.
- Italian FuturismLaunched by Marinetti's 1909 manifesto, Futurism glorified speed, machines, the city and war, and turned the printed page into an explosive, noisy field.
- DadaBorn in wartime Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916 and spreading to Berlin, Hanover, Cologne and Paris, Dada used chance, absurdity and provocation against the culture that had produced the war.
- MavoTokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925).
Chinese Modern Woodcut MovementThe leftist print movement launched by Lu Xun's 1931 Shanghai woodcut workshop, which made the self-cut black-and-white woodcut China's art of national crisis and revolution.
Acid Graphics / New UglyA late-2010s club and poster style that updates 1990s rave graphics with modern 3D tools: liquid-chrome and melting lettering, neo-tribal spikes, wireframes, op-art patterns and acid-green palettes on black, mixed with blackletter and stretched grotesques.
Styles that often use it 24
A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.
Hungarian Revolutionary PosterThe political posters of Hungary's revolutions.
- Vorticism & BLAST TypographyLondon's short-lived rival to Futurism, launched by Wyndham Lewis with BLAST (dated 20 June 1914; War Number, July 1915).
SuprematismKazimir Malevich's non-objective art, unveiled with the Black Square at the 0.10 exhibition in Petrograd in 1915, reduced painting to pure geometric planes floating in white, infinite space.
- Russian ConstructivismConstructivism rejected art for art's sake in favour of the artist-engineer building useful things for the new Soviet society.
- Estridentismo (Stridentist) GraphicsMexico's first avant-garde (1921-27), launched when Manuel Maples Arce pasted his manifesto Actual No. 1 on Mexico City walls.
American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age)The 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.
Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)The 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)The 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.
Blue Note Jazz Sleeve ModernismThe record-sleeve language of Blue Note Records, set by art director Reid Miles, who designed some 350 twelve-inch LP covers between about 1956 and 1967, often around Francis Wolff's session photographs.
Situationist Détournement GraphicsGraphics of the Letterist and Situationist Internationals (1956–1972), built on détournement: taking existing words and pictures (comic strips, advertisements, news photographs, city maps, classic texts) and turning them against their source.
Op Art GraphicsA 1960s style that turned perceptual research into graphic effect: precisely drawn lines, checks, concentric rings and modular grids, usually black and white or complementaries of equal value, that seem to vibrate, swell or move.
Angura Theatre PosterThe posters of Japan's underground (angura) theatre from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, made for troupes such as Kara Jūrō's Jōkyō Gekijō and Terayama Shūji's Tenjō Sajiki.
- Swiss Punk / New Wave TypographyA rebellion from inside the Swiss school: Wolfgang Weingart and his Basel students kept the grotesque and the grid but set them in motion with extreme letterspacing, stepped and angled lines, rules and bars, enlarged halftone screens and layered film montage.
Underground ComixSelf-published, adults-only comic books from the San Francisco counterculture, made outside the Comics Code on the newsstand comic's format.
- 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.
Dutch Expressive Postmodernism (Studio Dumbar & Hard Werken)An anti-functionalist current in Dutch graphic design led by Studio Dumbar in The Hague (from 1977) and the Rotterdam collective Hard Werken (magazine from 1979, design office 1982–1994).
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.
Cranbrook & Deconstructivist TypographyGraduate-school experimentation, centred on Katherine and Michael McCoy's Cranbrook design programme, that applied post-structuralist literary theory to the page.
Ghanaian Movie PosterHand-painted posters commissioned by Ghana's mobile video clubs from about 1985, painted by apprenticed sign painters on stitched flour sacks to advertise VHS screenings of Hollywood, Hong Kong, Nigerian and Indian films.
Grunge TypographyThe 1990s magazine and music-industry style in which type was layered, eroded, overlapped and cropped until legibility became negotiable.
- Indonesian Woodcut Activism (Taring Padi)The protest graphics of Taring Padi, the collective founded by students and activists in Yogyakarta in 1998 as Suharto fell, and of the punk and activist woodcut scenes around it.
Glitch Art & Datamosh GraphicsAn art and design practice that makes digital failure the picture.
Brutalist Web DesignA reaction against templated, conversion-optimised web design that exposes the raw materials of the browser: default system fonts, blue underlined links, visible borders, unstyled forms and plain document flow.
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 use it now and then 32
An occasional choice in these styles.
- Diné (Navajo) Weaving Design1700–present
- Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)1850–present
- Japonisme1860–1910
- Cubist Pictorial Space1907–1925
- Russian Futurist Book1910–1920
- Kultur-Lige & Yiddish Avant-Garde Book Design1917–1924
- Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil)1922–1938
- Surrealist Graphics1924–1960
- Spanish Civil War Poster1936–1939
- Escuela Bruguera (Spanish Humour Comics)1947–1986
- Hurufiyya Calligraphic Modernism1949–present
- Polish Poster School1950–1990
- Brazilian Concrete Design1951–1975
- West German Conceptual Film & Culture Poster (Hillmann and Rambow)1953–1990
- Zagreb School of Animated Film1954–1980
- Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)1962–1985
- Tropicália Graphic Design1964–1975
- AfriCOBRA1968–present
- Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective)1970–1990
- Turkish Weekly Humour Magazines (Gırgır to Uykusuz)1972–2025
- Bitterkomix (Afrikaans Underground Comics)1992–present
- Nollywood Video Jacket & Film Poster1992–present
- Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present
- Cartonera Books (Latin American Cardboard Publishing)2003–present
- Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay2006–present
- Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)2007–present
- Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters)2007–present
- Analog Horror Graphics2015–present
- Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals)2016–present
- Kinetic Typography & Variable Type2016–present
- Weirdcore & Dreamcore2019–present
- Neo-Brutalism2020–present
It often goes with
Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.
- Experimental & distortedin 34 of 62
- Rebellious & subversivein 39 of 62
- Collage & layeringin 35 of 62
- Rotated & vertical settingin 30 of 62
- Distortion & exaggerationin 33 of 62
- Ironic & self-awarein 28 of 62
Styles that avoid it
Styles that deliberately leave it out.
- Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho)c. 960–present
- Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing1822–1956
- Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type)1864–present
- Mir iskusstva Book Art1898–1927
- Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)1900–present
- Bezalel School1906–1929
- Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN)1933–1949
- West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs1950–present
- ECM Sleeve Aesthetic (Munich)1969–present
- Kawaii Design1970–present
- Madinah Mushaf (King Fahd Complex Qur'an Page)1985–present
- Emoji Pictographic Language1997–present
- Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)2011–present
- Lo-fi Anime Aesthetic2017–present
- Instagram Slideshow Activism (Social-Justice Infographics)2020–present