World region

Graphic-design styles from Oceania

Styles that took shape in Oceania, alone or together with other regions. Stylogeny describes 9 of them. The earliest began in 1500, the latest in 2012. Of these, 7 are still in use.

The 9 styles

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

Kōwhaiwhai & Toi Māori Design1500–present · OceaniaToi Māori, the visual arts of the tangata whenua of Aotearoa, of which kōwhaiwhai, the painted scroll patterns of paddles and meeting-house rafters, is the most graphic strand.
Pacific Barkcloth (Tapa) Design1700–present · OceaniaBarkcloth beaten from paper-mulberry inner bark and decorated across Polynesia and Fiji for gift exchange at weddings, funerals and chiefly investitures.
Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk1912–present · OceaniaPainting in ochres on flattened stringybark by Yolŋu, Kunwinjku, Kuninjku and other clans of Arnhem Land, carrying ceremonial designs into portable form; collected from 1912, painted through art centres since the 1970s.
Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)1929–1959 · OceaniaThe pictorial posters that the Australian National Travel Association (ANTA, 1929), state tourist bureaux, railways and shipping lines commissioned to sell Australia abroad and at home.
Australian Poster Collective Screenprints1971–1994 · OceaniaScreenprinted posters from the political poster collectives and community workshops that spread across Australia from Sydney's Tin Sheds, where Earthworks began in 1971.
Western Desert Iconography1971–present · OceaniaThe acrylic painting movement that took form at Papunya in 1971, when men there painted the Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall and then on board, carrying an older practice of sand, body and ceremonial designs into lasting form. 'Western Desert' is an umbrella name: the movement also includes Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Arrernte painters of the Central Desert.
Torres Strait Islander Linocut1991–present · OceaniaRelief prints by Torres Strait Islander artists of Zenadth Kes, which grew from an Indigenous visual art course at Cairns College of TAFE by 1991 and the Mualgau Minaral collective on Mua (Moa) Island.
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).
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 359 styles in the atlas as a whole, most telling first.

Graphic-design styles from Oceania

The 9 styles

The design choices they share

Their branches

When they began

All regions