Period

Graphic-design styles from 1900 to 1909

Styles that began between 1900 and 1909, by the year the atlas gives for when each took shape. Stylogeny describes 11 of them. The earliest began in 1900, the latest in 1909. Of these, 4 are still in use.

← 1800s 1910s →

The 11 styles

Oldest first. Each has its own page: its design choices, where it comes from, and real works.

Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe 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 Mola1900–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe 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.
Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe devotional imagery of Senegal's Sufi brotherhoods, above all the Mourides: reverse paintings on glass (souwère), made in Senegal's cities since about 1900, and the murals, banners, prints and photocopies that multiply one 1913 photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba across Dakar and Touba.
Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaTwo linked graphic languages of southeastern Nigeria.
Expressionist Woodcut Graphics1905–1925 · Central Europe, Western EuropeThe 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.
Plakatstil / Sachplakat1905–1920 · Central EuropeThe German 'object poster' launched by Lucian Bernhard's Priester match poster and printed by Berlin's Hollerbaum & Schmidt.
Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954 · South AsiaThe nationalist, anti-academic art of Calcutta and Santiniketan, which turned from oil-paint naturalism and chromolithograph gloss to Indian and pan-Asian sources.
Bezalel School1906–1929 · Middle East & North AfricaThe house style of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, opened in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz in 1906 with E.
Cubist Pictorial Space1907–1925 · Western EuropeThe pictorial revolution of Picasso and Braque that shattered single-point perspective into overlapping, faceted planes seen from several viewpoints at once.
London Transport Design1908–1966 · Western EuropeThe design programme Frank Pick built for London's Underground from 1908 and the London Passenger Transport Board (1933–40), continued by Harold Hutchison (1947–66).
Italian Futurism1909–1944 · Southern EuropeLaunched by Marinetti's 1909 manifesto, Futurism glorified speed, machines, the city and war, and turned the printed page into an explosive, noisy field.

The design choices they share

The choices these styles make more often than the 359 styles in the atlas as a whole, most telling first.

Graphic-design styles from 1900 to 1909

The 11 styles

The design choices they share

Where they come from

Their branches

All periods