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Period

2000s graphic-design styles

Styles that began in the 2000s, by the year the atlas gives for when each took shape. Stylogeny describes 28 of them. The earliest began in 2000, the latest in 2009. Of these, 25 are still in use.

← 1990s 2010s →

The 28 styles

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

Skeuomorphic UI2000–2013 · Global / networkedInterface design that imitates physical materials and objects (stitched leather, linen, wooden shelves, brushed aluminium, felt, paper and glass) so that digital tools look and behave like their real-world counterparts.
Tamil Nadu Flex Banners2000–present · South AsiaThe digitally printed vinyl boards, locally called flex banners, that fan clubs, party cadres, businesses and families have put up along the roads of Tamil Nadu since about 2000, as flex displaced hand-painted cinema banners and cut-outs over the following decade.
Yuru-chara (Japanese Local Mascot Design)2000–present · East AsiaJapan'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.
Glitch Art & Datamosh Graphics2001–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, North AmericaAn art and design practice that makes digital failure the picture.
Arabic Calligraffiti2002–present · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Global / networkedArabic letters sprayed, rolled and brushed at the scale of buildings.
Korean Webtoon Graphics2002–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe full-colour, vertical-scroll comic that Korean web portals made standard in the 2000s and smartphone apps took worldwide.
Cartonera Books (Latin American Cardboard Publishing)2003–present · Latin America & CaribbeanBooks of Latin America's cartonera presses, begun by Eloísa Cartonera in Buenos Aires in 2003 after Argentina's 2001 crash: photocopied texts stapled and glued by hand into covers cut from used boxes, usually bought from cartoneros (waste pickers) above the market price.
Contemporary Chinese Book Design ('Most Beautiful Books of China')2003–present · East AsiaChinese book design since 2003, when Shanghai founded the yearly 'Most Beautiful Books of China' award, whose winners go on to Leipzig.
Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular2003–present · Global / networked, North AmericaA deliberately amateur image dialect of forums, imageboards and social feeds, named 'Internet Ugly' by Nick Douglas in 2014.
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.
Frutiger Aero2004–2013 · Global / networkedThe glossy, optimistic look of consumer technology from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, retrospectively named in 2017 by the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute after Windows Vista's Aero interface and Adrian Frutiger's humanist sans.
Hauntology & Ghost Box Design2004–present · Western EuropeSleeves and print that rebuild a misremembered British past from the public graphics of roughly 1958–1978.
Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics)2005–present · East AsiaPrivate cars, motorbikes and bicycles that Japanese fans of anime, manga and games cover with their favourite characters, named by the mid-2000s with the self-mocking word itasha, 'painful car'.
Modern Calligraphy and Brush Lettering2005–present · North America, Western Europe, Global / networkedThe loose pointed-pen and brush-pen script of wedding stationery and the 2010s craft boom.
Neo-Andean Architecture (Cholets)2005–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe facades and party halls of El Alto, Bolivia, begun by the Aymara builder-architect Freddy Mamani in 2005 for a new Aymara merchant class.
Neo-Swiss Revival2005–present · Global / networked, Central Europe, Western EuropeA contemporary revival of the International Typographic Style, fuelled by digital re-releases of neo-grotesques and by studios such as Experimental Jetset and Norm: modular grids, flush-left grotesque type, huge tightly set headlines and flat fields of black, white and one signal colour.
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.
Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay2006–present · East AsiaThe bullet-comment layer of Japanese and Chinese video sites, begun on Niconico in December 2006 and taken up by AcFun and Bilibili in 2008–2009.
Oaxacan Protest Printmaking & Street Graphics (ASARO)2006–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe street graphics of Oaxaca City since the 2006 teachers' strike and APPO uprising, when ASARO, the stencil collective Lapiztola and later workshops such as Colectivo Subterráneos made the colonial centre's walls a newspaper.
Synthwave / Outrun2006–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, Northern Europe, North America, OceaniaThe retro-futurist look of synthwave music: a 1980s revival that grew from mid-2000s French electro and online synth scenes, took its other name from Sega's arcade racer Out Run (1986) and reached the mainstream with Drive (2011).
Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)2007–present · Middle East & North AfricaAdult comics magazines edited by Arab artists' collectives since 2007, at times with a ministry grant or an NGO partner: Samandal in Beirut, TokTok in Cairo, Lab619 in Tunis and Skefkef in Casablanca.
Generative & Dynamic Identities2007–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, North AmericaIdentity systems designed as rules rather than fixed marks: logos and graphics generated by code, data or parameters so that they vary endlessly while staying recognisable.
Hipster Artisanal Revival2007–2018 · North America, Global / networkedThe trade-mark look of the 2007–2018 craft boom, which dressed new coffee roasters, breweries and stationers as nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century firms.
Lucerne Poster Scene (Neubad & Südpol Posters)2007–present · Central EuropeLucerne's poster culture for small non-commercial venues (Südpol, Neubad, Treibhaus) and the Weltformat festival.
Natural Wine Label Art2007–present · Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Global / networkedThe labels of the natural (low-intervention) wine scene, which grew from Beaujolais into a worldwide network of small growers, bars and importers.
Polish Information Picture Book (Dwie Siostry)2008–present · Eastern EuropeMostly large-format information picture books made since 2008 by the Warsaw publisher Dwie Siostry with young illustrators led by Aleksandra and Daniel Mizieliński, graduates of the city's Academy of Fine Arts: atlases, cross-sections, labyrinths, activity books and wordless seek-and-find board books.
Risograph & Indie Print Culture2008–present · Global / networkedA contemporary culture of zines, art books, posters and prints made on Japanese Risograph stencil duplicators, whose soy-based spot inks (fluorescent pink, yellow, blue, teal) are laid down one drum at a time.
Newsroom Data Graphics & Scrollytelling2009–present · North America, Western EuropeThe house style of newspaper graphics desks since about 2009–2011 (the New York Times graphics desk, D3.js, the Guardian Datablog): conventional charts drawn from the data, on a white or pale paper ground with light grey gridlines and no axis titles, lines labelled directly in place of a legend where possible and short annotations saying what to look at.

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.

Full bleedin 18 of 28
Web & CSSin 13 of 28
Motion & broadcastin 11 of 28
Ironic & self-awarein 13 of 28
Fluorescent & neonin 10 of 28
Found & vernacular imageryin 12 of 28
3D renderin 8 of 28
Gradientsin 13 of 28

Where they come from

Their branches

All periods