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Period

2010s graphic-design styles

Styles that began in the 2010s, by the year the atlas gives for when each took shape. Stylogeny describes 35 of them. The earliest began in 2010, the latest in 2019. Of these, 26 are still in use.

← 2000s 2020s →

The 35 styles

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

Flat Design2010–2016 · North America, Global / networkedAn interface and illustration language that stripped screens of simulated materials, replacing bevels, gloss and textures with solid fields of colour, clean sans-serif type and reduced pictograms.
Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014 · Middle East & North AfricaThe street art of Egypt's 2011 revolution and the years after it, when Cairo's walls, above all around Tahrir and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became what Ammar Abo Bakr called a newspaper.
Slow-Living Editorial (the Kinfolk Look)2011–present · North America, Northern Europe, Global / networkedThe look of Kinfolk, the slow-living quarterly founded in Portland in 2011 and run from Copenhagen since 2015, and of the indie lifestyle titles and Instagram feeds that copied it.
Syrian Revolution Graphics (Kafranbel Banners & Poster Collectives)2011–2024 · Middle East & North AfricaProtest graphics of the Syrian uprising from 2011, made to be photographed and shared online rather than to last on a wall.
Vaporwave2011–2017 · Global / networked, North AmericaAn internet-born microgenre and visual aesthetic that remixes the debris of late-20th-century consumer culture (Windows 95 dialogs, classical busts, palm trees, mall interiors, Japanese text, early 3D renders) in pastel pinks and cyans.
DTC 'Blanding' / Millennial Minimalism2012–2022 · North America, Global / networkedThe friendly, frictionless minimalism of 2010s direct-to-consumer start-ups, built for the phone screen, the Instagram feed and the unboxing.
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).
Low Poly Illustration2012–present · Global / networkedA digital illustration and game look in which subjects are built from a visible mesh of a few flat-shaded polygons, so that animals, faces, vehicles and landscapes read as hard-edged facets with no outline or texture.
Plain Tobacco Packaging2012–present · Oceania, Western Europe, Northern Europe, North America, Global / networkedA packaging language written into law to strip tobacco of persuasion.
YouTube Thumbnail Style (the 'YouTube Face')2012–present · North America, Global / networkedThe custom thumbnail of YouTube's creator economy: a 16:9 still made to be read at fingernail size in a feed of recommendations.
'Good Morning' Greeting Images (WhatsApp Forward Vernacular)2013–present · South Asia, Latin America & CaribbeanThe ready-made greeting pictures that millions of smartphone users, many of them older and new to the internet, forward to family, friends and groups each morning on WhatsApp, above all in India and Brazil.
Brutalist Web Design2014–present · Global / networked, Central EuropeA 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.
Data Humanism2014–present · Southern Europe, North America, Western EuropeAn information-design approach that draws data rather than charting it, treating numbers as personal, approximate and human.
Hong Kong Protest Art (Umbrella Movement to the 2019–20 Protests)2014–2020 · East AsiaThe graphics of Hong Kong's democracy protests, from the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the national security law of 2020, in two linked media.
Material Design2014–present · North America, Global / networkedGoogle's design system, launched in 2014, which reintroduced controlled depth to flat design through the metaphor of 'material': sheets of digital paper and ink that sit at defined elevations, cast consistent shadows and move with meaningful motion.
Solarpunk2014–present · Global / networked, North America, Latin America & CaribbeanHopeful eco-futurist imagery born online.
Analog Horror Graphics2015–present · North America, Global / networkedA horror genre, mostly on YouTube, that tells its stories through imitation television and home-video graphics rather than actors: emergency-alert screens, station IDs, public-service, educational and instructional tapes, set between the 1960s and early 2000s.
Latin American Feminist Protest Graphics (Ni Una Menos and the Green Wave)2015–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe graphics of Latin America's feminist tide, a mass movement since Ni Una Menos (Buenos Aires, 3 June 2015) and the 2018 'marea verde' for legal abortion, though its scarf dates from 2003.
Acid Graphics / New Ugly2016–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, Central EuropeA 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.
Front-of-Pack Warning Octagons (Latin American Food Warning Seals)2016–present · Latin America & CaribbeanA state warning system stacked on commercial food packs.
Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)2016–present · North America, Western Europe, Global / networkedThe illustrated cover of the contemporary romantic comedy: a couple drawn as flat cartoon figures with simplified faces, from silhouettes and hidden faces to a few cartoon features, caught in one gesture that states the premise, on a single saturated ground of teal, pink, yellow or purple, under a hand-lettered title so large that the figures often lean on it.
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.
VTuber Avatar and Stream Graphics2016–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe graphic kit of virtual YouTubers, streamers who perform behind an animated anime-style character instead of their own face.
Corporate Memphis2017–present · North America, Global / networkedThe flat vector illustration style that became the default visual voice of big tech in the late 2010s: faceless, ethnically non-specific figures with elongated limbs and tiny heads, drawn in bright flat colour among blobs, leaves and confetti.
Lo-fi Anime Aesthetic2017–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, North America, East AsiaThe look of YouTube's 24/7 lo-fi hip hop streams.
Newtro (Korean New-Retro)2017–present · East AsiaA South Korean branding trend, named 'Going New-tro' in Seoul National University's Trend Korea 2019 (October 2018), in which heritage firms reissue their own postwar to 1990s labels, trademarks and mascots, polished for young buyers.
NFT Profile-Picture Collections (CryptoPunks to Bored Apes)2017–present · Global / networked, North AmericaSets of thousands of avatar portraits that code assembles from one or two hundred hand-drawn traits, each sold as a token on a blockchain.
Extinction Rebellion Graphics2018–present · Western Europe, Global / networkedThe visual identity of Extinction Rebellion, the climate movement founded in Stroud in 2018, built by its volunteer Art Group as a free kit anyone may print.
Guochao (China-Chic National Trend)2018–present · East AsiaA Chinese branding and fashion trend, usually dated from Li-Ning's 'China Li-Ning' show at New York Fashion Week in February 2018, that redraws heritage motifs as finishes for sneakers, apparel, cosmetics and museum merchandise.
Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)2018–present · Western Europe, Central EuropeA Franco-Belgian type practice that redesigns written French for gender inclusion inside the word.
Book Blob (Abstract Colour-Blob Literary Fiction Cover)2019–2023 · North AmericaThe default jacket of US literary fiction around 2019–2023: soft, overlapping blobs of saturated colour fill the cover edge to edge (cobalt, pink, orange-red, deep green, mustard).
Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)2019–2022 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe 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.
Dark Tech Minimalism2019–present · North America, Global / networkedThe dark, restrained aesthetic of developer tools and SaaS landing pages since about 2019: near-black grounds, grey type ramps, a neutral grotesque such as Inter, hairline borders, soft radial glows and bento grids of crisp product screenshots.
Neumorphism2019–2021 · Global / networkedA short-lived interface trend in which controls are extruded from, or pressed into, a background of the same colour and modelled only by paired soft shadows.
Weirdcore & Dreamcore2019–present · Global / networkedAn internet aesthetic popularised on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube in the early 2020s, with dreamcore as its softer, pastel, cloud-filled sister.

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.

Web & CSSin 30 of 35
Pastelin 18 of 35
App & OS interfacein 14 of 35
Motion & broadcastin 14 of 35
3D renderin 10 of 35
Fluorescent & neonin 12 of 35
Flat vector illustrationin 12 of 35
Ornament-freein 15 of 35

Where they come from

Their branches

All periods