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World region

Graphic-design styles from Southern Europe

Styles that took shape in Southern Europe, alone or together with other regions. Stylogeny describes 33 of them. The earliest began in c. 690, the latest in 2014. Of these, 18 are still in use.

The 33 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.
Hebrew Micrographyc. 895–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA Jewish scribal art in which lines of minute Hebrew script, usually the Masoretic notes that guard the biblical text, are written so that the line itself draws: interlaced frames and star rosettes on full carpet pages, and animals, knights, fish and grotesques in the margins.
Maghrebi Script (Maghribi Calligraphy of al-Andalus and North Africa)c. 900–present · Middle East & North Africa, Southern Europe, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe family of Arabic scripts of al-Andalus and North Africa, descended from early Kufic bookhands.
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.
Vyaz (Ornamental Slavonic Lettering)c. 1230–present · Eastern Europe, Southern EuropeCyrillic letters bound into one even band of ornament.
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.
Renaissance Book Typographyc. 1460–1600 · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central EuropeThe printed book as shaped by humanist Italy and France: roman and italic types modelled on humanist handwriting, a single justified text block set in harmonious proportions within generous margins, and woodcut initials, borders and printer's devices as the only ornament.
Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram)1531–1724 · Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA European book genre in which, from Chrestien Wechel's Paris edition of 1534 on, every page or opening repeats one fixed unit: a short motto, an allegorical picture and an explanatory verse, which only together yield a moral, amorous or religious meaning.
Tarot de Marseille Woodcut Cards1639–present · Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central EuropeThe standard pattern of French tarot cards, descended from Milanese tarot and recut by card-makers in Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Dijon and Marseille from the 17th century.
Neoclassical Book Typography1757–1830 · Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central EuropeThe Enlightenment book stripped of Renaissance woodcut decoration.
Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino)1879–present · Southern EuropeThe Spanish bullfight poster in its illustrated form, from Marcelino de Unceta's lithographs (from 1879) to the Valencian house of Ortega, which supplied rings across Spain.
Art Nouveau1890–1910 · Western Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, North AmericaAn international 'new art' that sought a modern style free of historical revival, drawing its forms from plant growth and the female figure.
Italian Futurism1909–1944 · Southern EuropeLaunched by Marinetti's 1909 manifesto, Futurism glorified speed, machines, the city and war, and turned the printed page into an explosive, noisy field.
Italian Fascist Graphics (Romanità & Exhibition Photomontage)1921–1943 · Southern EuropeThe visual language of Italian Fascism, which turned modernist means to a cult of Rome and of the Duce.
Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)1929–present · Southern EuropeThe cover system of Mondadori's crime series, Milan, from I Libri Gialli of 1929 to Il Giallo Mondadori today.
Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line)1929–present · Western Europe, Southern EuropeThe comic drawing style of Hergé's Tintin and the Brussels school, named 'klare lijn' by Joost Swarte in 1977.
Estado Novo Folk Modernism (SPN)1933–1949 · Southern EuropeThe official image of Salazar's Estado Novo, shaped by António Ferro's Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN, 1933; SNI from 1944).
Milanese Industrial Modernism (Olivetti, Pirelli, Studio Boggeri)1933–1975 · Southern EuropeThe Milan-centred school that married Bauhaus- and Swiss-trained discipline with Italian painterly wit for enlightened industrial patrons such as Olivetti, Pirelli and La Rinascente.
Spanish Civil War Poster1936–1939 · Southern EuropeThe poster war waged by the Spanish Republic, its unions and its anarchist, communist and socialist parties against Franco's uprising.
Escuela Bruguera (Spanish Humour Comics)1947–1986 · Southern EuropeThe house style of Editorial Bruguera's humour cartoonists in Barcelona from 1947 to 1986, named the 'Escuela Bruguera' by Terenci Moix in 1968.
Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance)1947–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America & CaribbeanThe photo-romance of the Italian women's weeklies: a melodrama told in staged photographs, first printed by Il mio sogno and Bolero Film in May 1947 and copied from France to Brazil.
Bonelli Fumetto (Italian Popular Adventure Comics)1948–present · Southern EuropeThe house format of Milan's Bonelli publishing house and its imitators (Tex, Zagor, Dylan Dog, Nathan Never): monthly newsstand paperbacks of 16 x 21 cm with about a hundred black-and-white pages, each a long episode of a serial hero.
Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)1951–1975 · Southern Europe, Central EuropeZagreb graphic design grown from the EXAT 51 manifesto (1951), which tied abstract art to visual communication.
Zagreb School of Animated Film1954–1980 · Southern Europe, Central EuropeThe modernist animation of Zagreb Film's Studio for Animated Film, grown from reduced-animation advertisements of 1954-1955 and named the 'Zagreb school' by Georges Sadoul and André Martin after Cannes 1958.
Greek Tourism Modernism (EOT)1960–1974 · Southern EuropeThe modernist image of Greece made for the National Tourism Organisation (EOT) by Michalis Katzourakis, its art adviser in 1960-1967, and by Frederick Carabott, who advised it until 1967; in 1962 the two also founded the K&K Athens Advertising Centre.
Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)1968–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & North Africa, Southeast Asia, North AmericaThe graphic language of Italy's organised football supporters, the ultras, from the late 1960s, and of the groups that copied them across Europe, North Africa and beyond.
La Movida Madrileña Graphics1977–1988 · Southern EuropeThe graphics of Madrid's Movida, the post-Franco scene of new-wave bands, fanzines and night life usually dated from the Canito concert of 9 February 1980 and later backed by the city council.
NSK Retro-Avant-Garde1980–present · Central Europe, Southern EuropeThe retro-avant-garde of Neue Slowenische Kunst, founded in Ljubljana in 1984 by Laibach, IRWIN and the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre, with Novi kolektivizem as its design department.
Memphis Design1981–1988 · Southern EuropeThe Milan collective founded by Ettore Sottsass, whose furniture, laminates and objects (first shown in September 1981) became a graphic language of their own.
Hype Streetwear Graphics (Box Logo to Quotation Marks)1993–present · North America, East Asia, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Global / networkedThe logo-led graphics of streetwear since the 1990s: one wordmark or emblem on a plain T-shirt, hoodie or object is the product.
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.
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.

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.

Nostalgic & retroin 14 of 33
Repetition & rhythmin 23 of 33
Authoritative & institutionalin 15 of 33
Architecture & signagein 18 of 33
Emblems & badgesin 18 of 33
Lithographyin 10 of 33
Monochromein 19 of 33
Jewel & metallicin 9 of 33

Their branches

When they began

All regions