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Period

1930s graphic-design styles

Styles that began in the 1930s, by the year the atlas gives for when each took shape. Stylogeny describes 17 of them. The earliest began in 1930, the latest in 1937. Of these, 2 are still in use.

← 1920s 1940s →

The 17 styles

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

AIZ Political Photomontage (Heartfield)1930–1938 · Central EuropeThe political photomontage John Heartfield made for the communist weekly AIZ from 1930 to 1938, in Berlin and, from 1933, in Prague exile.
Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)1930–1970 · Latin America & CaribbeanMexico's give-away advertising calendars, at their height from the 1930s to the late 1960s.
Scandinavian Functionalism1930–present · Northern EuropeNordic functionalism (funkis) arrived in graphic form with Sigurd Lewerentz's posters and winged emblem for the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition.
Streamline Moderne1930–1945 · North AmericaThe late, chiefly American phase of Art Deco, in which aerodynamic science became a visual language for a Depression-era culture hungry for progress.
Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement1931–1949 · East AsiaThe 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.
Egyptian Painted Film Poster1932–1996 · Middle East & North AfricaThe painted publicity of Egyptian cinema from the early talkies to the 1990s, designed outside the studios by artist-printers such as Hassan Mazhar Gassour and printed as colour lithographs in Cairo.
Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster1932–1989 · Eastern Europe, Central Europe, East Asia, Southeast AsiaThe official art doctrine of the Soviet Union from 1932, later exported across the socialist world, which replaced avant-garde experiment with legible, heroic realism 'national in form, socialist in content'.
Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN)1933–1949 · Southern EuropeThe official image of Salazar's Estado Novo, shaped by António Ferro's Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN, 1933; SNI from 1944).
Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri)1933–1975 · Southern EuropeThe Milan-centred school that married Bauhaus- and Swiss-trained discipline with Italian painterly wit for enlightened industrial patrons such as Olivetti, Pirelli and La Rinascente.
Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)1933–1945 · East AsiaLuxury photo-propaganda magazines that imperial Japan sent abroad, 1934–45.
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.
Hebrew Poster Lettering & Early Israeli State Design1934–1974 · Middle East & North AfricaThe commercial and state graphics of the Jewish community in Mandate Palestine and early Israel, made in Tel Aviv from 1934 by designers who had trained in Berlin and Vienna: Franz Krausz, Otte Wallish and the Shamir brothers.
Tiki Pop (Polynesian Pop)1934–present · North AmericaThe mainland American fantasy of the South Seas, begun by Don the Beachcomber's Hollywood bar (about 1934) and Trader Vic's in Oakland and at its height in the Polynesian restaurants of the 1950s and 60s.
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.
WPA Silkscreen Posters1935–1943 · North AmericaPosters made by the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration to promote health campaigns, education, theatre, travel and the national parks during the Depression.
Spanish Civil War Poster1936–1939 · Southern EuropeThe poster war waged by the Spanish Republic, its unions and its anarchist, communist and socialist parties against Franco's uprising.
Taller de Gráfica Popular1937–1977 · Latin America & CaribbeanA Mexico City printmaking collective founded in 1937 around Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O'Higgins and Luis Arenal to put art at the service of popular and anti-fascist struggles.

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.

Utopian & idealisticin 12 of 17
Lithographyin 11 of 17
Illusion of depthin 12 of 17
Diagonal axisin 11 of 17
Naturalistic depictionin 13 of 17
Restrained accentsin 13 of 17
Agitational & persuasivein 10 of 17
Photomontagein 8 of 17

Where they come from

Their branches

All periods