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World region

Graphic-design styles from South Asia

Styles that took shape in South Asia, alone or together with other regions. Stylogeny describes 23 of them. The earliest began in c. 690, the latest in 2013. Of these, 18 are still in use.

The 23 styles

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

Islamic Geometric & Calligraphic Traditionc. 690–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southern EuropeA visual system shared across the Islamic world in which proportioned calligraphy, compass-and-straightedge geometry and the vegetal arabesque carry meaning and beauty in place of figurative imagery.
Square Kufic (Bannāʾī)c. 1100–present · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaSquare Kufic builds Arabic script on a square grid: straight lines and right angles only, with every stroke as wide as the gap beside it.
Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting)c. 1300–1700 · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaThe court book painting of Iran and Timurid Herat, formed in Mongol Tabriz from Islamic, Byzantine and Chinese models: from Rashid al-Din's Jamiʿ al-tawarikh (1314) and the Great Mongol Shahnama to Behzad's Herat and the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, ending in the album pages of Safavid Isfahan.
Ottoman Tughra & Dîvânî Chancery Calligraphyc. 1324–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South AsiaThe Ottoman sultan's calligraphic monogram and the chancery hand written beneath it.
Mithila (Madhubani) Paintingc. 1350–present · South AsiaWomen's ritual wall and floor painting from Mithila in north Bihar and Nepal's Terai, attested from at least the 14th century, seen by W.
Persian Nastaʿlīq Calligraphy (Qiṭʿa, Chalipa and Siyāh-mashq)c. 1400–present · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaThe 'hanging' script of Persian poetry and an art of the single sheet.
Tibetan Woodblock Print Culture (Pecha & Prayer Flags)c. 1410–present · East Asia, South AsiaTibetan Buddhist and Bön woodblock printing, from the first printed Kangyur (1410, cut in China) and the 15th-century presses of Gungthang to the great printing houses of Narthang, Derge and Lhasa.
Zoomorphic & Figural Calligraphy (Islamic Calligrams)1500–present · Middle East & North Africa, South Asia, Southeast AsiaPictorial writing in which the strokes of a devotional text form one figure: a lion of ʿAli built from the Nad-e ʿAli prayer, a galleon whose hull spells the names of the Seven Sleepers, a peacock, a Sufi cap.
Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints1830–1930 · South AsiaThe bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs.
Urdu Katib Lithography1837–present · South AsiaFor about a century and a half Urdu chose lithography over movable type, because metal type could not reproduce the sloping, stacked ligatures of Nastaʿlīq.
Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type)1864–present · South AsiaDevanagari as Javaji Dadaji's Bombay type foundry (1864) and Nirnaya Sagar Press (1869) cut and printed it: upright metal type with a strong headline, cut with the punch-cutter Ranoji Aru, and enough conjunct and 'Akhand' sorts to set Sanskrit, Vedic accents and Marathi whole.
Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present · South AsiaMass-printed images of Hindu deities, epic scenes, saints, nationalist heroes and film stars, sold in bazaars and given away as business calendars, from the chromolithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio and Ravi Varma Press to Sivakasi offset.
Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954 · South AsiaThe nationalist, anti-academic art of Calcutta and Santiniketan, which turned from oil-paint naturalism and chromolithograph gloss to Indian and pan-Asian sources.
Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster1940–1999 · South AsiaThe painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Bengali Modernist Book Cover (Prachchhad)1943–present · South AsiaA literary book-jacket culture that began at Calcutta's Signet Press in 1943, where Satyajit Ray and later Purnendu Pattrea made the hand-drawn Bengali title the main image of the cover.
Pakistani Truck Art1947–present · South AsiaThe total decoration of Pakistan's trucks and buses, which grew from company marks and saints' portraits painted in the late 1940s into a workshop art in which painters, metalworkers, woodcarvers and reflective-tape specialists collaborate on each vehicle.
Indian Institutional Modernism (NID)1961–1990 · South AsiaThe design culture of independent India's public institutions, banks and broadcasters.
Amar Chitra Katha Comics1967–present · South AsiaThe Bombay comic-book series that from 1967 retold Hindu myth and epic, Buddhist and Jain tales, saints, folk legends, the jests of the court wits Birbal and Tenali Raman, and Indian history for children, in English and Indian languages, with well over 500 titles by the early 1990s.
Warli Painting1970–present · South AsiaThe ritual wall painting of the Warli, an Adivasi people of the northern Sahyadri in Maharashtra, carried onto paper and canvas from the 1970s by Jivya Soma Mashe and others.
Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)1981–present · South AsiaPainting on paper and canvas by Pardhan Gond artists of Patangarh and Bhopal, begun when Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, recruited Jangarh Singh Shyam in 1981; the style was later named Jangarh Kalam after him.
Indian Pop-Kitsch Design (Desi Kitsch)1997–present · South AsiaUrban Indian gift and T-shirt design from the late 1990s into the 2010s that recasts the street and bazaar as ironic, affectionate icons: truck tails and 'Horn OK Please', auto-rickshaws, Ambassadors and Chetaks, cutting chai, old Bollywood stills and dialogues, Bhagat Singh in place of Che.
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.
'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.

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.

Spiritual & sacredin 18 of 23
Brush & pen calligraphyin 14 of 23
Borders & framesin 16 of 23
Biomorphic curvesin 14 of 23
Floral & vegetalin 13 of 23
Folk & sacred symbolsin 15 of 23
Jewel & metallicin 10 of 23
Horror vacuiin 16 of 23