Skip to content

World region

Graphic-design styles from Sub-Saharan Africa

Styles that took shape in Sub-Saharan Africa, alone or together with other regions. Stylogeny describes 29 of them. The earliest began in antiquity, the latest in 2018. Of these, 23 are still in use.

The 29 styles

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

Amazigh Sign System & Tifinaghc. 0–present · Middle East & North Africa, Sub-Saharan AfricaThe visual language shared by Amazigh communities from the Rif, Atlas and Kabylie to the Aurès and the Tuareg Sahara.
Ethiopian Ge'ez Manuscript & Haräg Illuminationc. 500–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe manuscript art of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, written in the Ge'ez syllabary on parchment from the Garima Gospels (radiocarbon-dated to roughly the 4th–7th centuries) to the present.
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.
Adinkra & Kente Symbol Systems1700–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Akan textile languages of Ghana.
Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa)1850–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe company flags (frankaa) of the Fante asafo, the old warrior companies of Ghana's central coast, widely adopted from the mid-nineteenth century.
African Wax & Fancy Print1880–present · Sub-Saharan Africa, Western EuropeIndustrially printed cotton made for West and Central African markets, first by Dutch and British mills that imitated Javanese batik with resin resist, and later by African mills.
Kanga (Swahili Message Cloth)1886–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaPrinted cotton wraps worn by women of the Swahili coast and its hinterland since the late nineteenth century, bought in pairs.
Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe mud-dyed cotton cloth of the Bamana and other Malian peoples, in which the ground rather than the motif is painted: cloth dyed yellow with n'gallama leaves is covered around each sign with fermented iron-rich mud, and the unpainted signs are then bleached pale.
Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe devotional imagery of Senegal's Sufi brotherhoods, above all the Mourides: reverse paintings on glass (souwère), made in Senegal's cities since about 1900, and the murals, banners, prints and photocopies that multiply one 1913 photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba across Dakar and Touba.
Uli & Nsibidi Line and Sign Tradition1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaTwo linked graphic languages of southeastern Nigeria.
Ndebele Geometric Painting1940–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe mural tradition of Southern Ndebele women, who paint homestead walls and gateways, and later canvases and objects, with bold, symmetrical geometric designs.
Onitsha Market Pamphlets1947–1980 · Sub-Saharan AfricaCheap, stapled pamphlets of romance, advice, drama and political biography, written by students, clerks, journalists and traders and printed by jobbing letterpress shops around Onitsha Main Market in eastern Nigeria from the late 1940s.
West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs1950–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaHand-painted boards advertising barbershops and braiding salons across West and Central Africa, made by self-taught, often anonymous sign painters since the mid-20th century.
Drum Magazine & Sophiatown Photojournalism1951–1965 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe picture magazine of Black urban Africa in the 1950s.
Rorke's Drift Linocut1962–1982 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe prints of the Lutheran art centre that Swedish teachers Peder and Ulla Gowenius started at Ceza Hospital in 1962 and moved to Rorke's Drift in 1963: under apartheid, which denied Black South Africans formal fine-art education, the chief training ground for many Black artists.
Tingatinga Painting1968–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaA Tanzanian popular painting school begun in Dar es Salaam by Edward Tingatinga (1932–1972), who from 1968 painted animals, birds and village scenes in glossy bicycle enamel on square hardboard ceiling boards for residents and tourists.
Afrofuturist Design1970–present · North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Global / networkedA visual language of Black futures that fuses African and diasporic iconography (pyramids and ankhs, Adinkra and Nsibidi glyphs, textile patterning) with spacecraft, cosmic fields and technology.
Kinshasa Popular Painting1970–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaA school of easel painting founded in Kinshasa in the early 1970s by Chéri Samba, Moké, Chéri Chérin and Pierre Bodo, largely self-taught painters, several of them trained in Kinshasa's billboard and sign workshops.
Afrobeat Sleeve Art1974–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe painted and collaged record covers of Nigerian Afrobeat, defined by Lemi Ghariokwu's sleeves for Fela Kuti from Alagbon Close (1974) onward.
Ethiopian Revolutionary Poster (Derg Era)1974–1991 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe poster and mural art of the Derg military government and its successor, Mengistu's People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (1974–1991), made mostly by teachers and students of the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts.
South African Resistance Poster1978–1994 · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe posters of the struggle against apartheid, from the exiled Medu Art Ensemble in Gaborone to the community workshops that served the United Democratic Front and the unions in the 1980s.
Ghanaian Movie Poster1985–2005 · Sub-Saharan AfricaHand-painted posters commissioned by Ghana's mobile video clubs from about 1985, painted by apprenticed sign painters on stitched flour sacks to advertise VHS screenings of Hollywood, Hong Kong, Nigerian and Indian films.
Ghanaian Funeral Poster & Banner1990–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe printed death announcements of southern Ghana, also found elsewhere in West Africa: colour posters, mostly A2, pasted on walls, trees, poles and vehicles, and by the mid-2010s large PVC banners hung at the family house.
Matatu & Nganya Art1990–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe commissioned livery of Kenya's privately owned minibus taxis, at its most elaborate the Nairobi nganya.
Nigerian Pentecostal Crusade Poster & Billboard1990–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe roadside adverts of Nigeria's Pentecostal and independent churches: billboards, banners and posters on poles, walls and bridges announcing crusades, revivals, conventions and night vigils.
Bitterkomix (Afrikaans Underground Comics)1992–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe Afrikaans underground comics magazine founded in Stellenbosch in 1992 by Anton Kannemeyer (Joe Dog) and Conrad Botes (Konradski), with Mark Kannemeyer (Lorcan White).
Nollywood Video Jacket & Film Poster1992–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe cover and poster art of Nigeria's home-video boom, from Living in Bondage (1992) on.
South African Vernacular Design (Ijusi)1995–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaA post-apartheid design language launched in Durban in 1995 by Garth Walker's Orange Juice Design and its free, experimental magazine Ijusi (isiZulu for 'juice'), which asked 'What makes me South African, and what does that look like?'.
Sudanese Revolution Graphics (Digital Illustrations and Sit-in Murals)2018–present · Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedThe graphics of Sudan's December Revolution from 2018: digital illustrations and cartoons shared on Instagram and Facebook from inside Sudan and the diaspora, and the murals of the 2019 Khartoum sit-in.

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.

Communal & popularin 26 of 29
Horror vacuiin 22 of 29
Framed panelsin 23 of 29
All capsin 21 of 29
Folk & sacred symbolsin 18 of 29
Borders & framesin 18 of 29
Spiritual & sacredin 17 of 29
Full polychromein 22 of 29

Their branches

When they began

All regions