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World region

Graphic-design styles from Northern Europe

Styles that took shape in Northern Europe, alone or together with other regions. Stylogeny describes 14 of them. The earliest began in c. 1140, the latest in 2012. Of these, 11 are still in use.

The 14 styles

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

European Heraldryc. 1140–present · Western Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern EuropeThe hereditary identifying devices of medieval Europe's knights and seals, codified into a rule-bound grammar still used by states, cities, churches, universities and families.
Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Traditionc. 1180–present · Central Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, North America, Global / networkedThe broken scripts of the Latin West.
Sápmi Graphic Identity (Duodji & Gákti Colour Code)1600–present · Northern Europe, Eastern EuropeDuodji is Sámi handicraft: hard work in wood, horn and bone, soft work in skin and cloth; drums painted with alder-bark figures survive from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)1880–1922 · Northern EuropeThe flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament.
Scandinavian Functionalism1930–present · Northern EuropeNordic functionalism (funkis) arrived in graphic form with Sigurd Lewerentz's posters and winged emblem for the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition.
Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism)1951–present · Northern EuropeThe printed-cotton modernism of Marimekko, founded in Helsinki in 1951 by Armi and Viljo Ratia out of Viljo's printing firm Printex.
Situationist Détournement Graphics1956–1972 · Western Europe, Northern EuropeGraphics 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.
Thaw Modernism (Soviet and Czechoslovak)1956–1968 · Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Northern EuropeThe light, stylised modernism that replaced Socialist Realist illusionism and Stalinist pomp in Soviet and Czechoslovak graphic and applied design, from the 1956 Secret Speech, the 1957 Moscow youth festival and Expo 58 to the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 (a political cut-off; the manner ran on into the 1970s).
Demoscene Graphics (Cracktros, Demos & Text-Mode Art)1985–present · Northern Europe, Central Europe, Western Europe, North America, Global / networkedThe graphics of the demoscene, a mainly European community of coders, graphicians and musicians that grew from the intros software crackers added to pirated Commodore 64 and Amiga games in the mid-1980s.
Black Metal Graphics1990–present · Northern Europe, Global / networkedThe visual language of black metal, fixed by Norway's second wave in the early 1990s, now worldwide, since the 2010s borrowed by mainstream acts (Szpajdel's Rihanna and Metallica logos, 2016).
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.
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).
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.
Plain Tobacco Packaging2012–present · Oceania, Western Europe, Northern Europe, North America, Global / networkedA packaging language written into law to strip tobacco of persuasion.

The design choices they share

The choices these styles make more often than the 362 styles in the atlas as a whole, most telling first.

Nostalgic & retroin 8 of 14
Dark groundin 9 of 14
Angular & zigzagin 7 of 14
Jewel & metallicin 6 of 14
Analogous harmonyin 5 of 14
Pattern & repeatin 7 of 14
Blackletterin 4 of 14
Grain & noisein 5 of 14

Their branches

When they began

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