Stylogenyin the style of Art Deco

Pictorial & machine age · 1910–1939 · Western Europe, North America, Global / networked

Art Deco

Also known as Style Moderne, Art Déco, Jazz Age Modern

The glamorous modern style named after the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which disciplined ornament into geometry: sunbursts, chevrons, stepped forms and sleek stylised figures rendered in lacquer-smooth colour with metallic accents. In Cassandre's and Colin's posters, fashion magazines, cinemas and luxury packaging it spoke of speed, travel, jazz and wealth.

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An Art Deco-style poster headed “AURORA” shows an elongated woman in a teal-and-gold gown standing above a locomotive approaching head-on. Symmetrical skyscrapers, arched viaducts, clouds of steam, and a gold sun with radiating red and cream rays surround her.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Geometrise ornament: turn flowers, fountains and rays into sunbursts, chevrons, zigzags and stepped forms.
  • Compose on a strong central axis, often with a dramatic low viewpoint and converging lines.
  • Simplify figures and machines into sleek, elongated silhouettes with polished, airbrushed gradation.
  • Set display type in geometric or inline capitals, widely spaced and monumental.
  • Use black, cream and metallic gold or silver with a few jewel or lacquer accents.
  • Make the product or destination a heroic icon: ocean liner, locomotive, skyscraper, perfume bottle.

Paris, France; spreading to New York, London, Shanghai, Mumbai and beyond

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Whiplash line, Collage & layering, Photocopy & distress, Experimental & distorted, Lowercase only, Rebellious & subversive

Palette

  • #111111
  • #c9a227
  • #f1e6cf
  • #0f5c55
  • #8c1c26
  • #b8bec4

Typefaces

  • Broadway

    Morris Fuller Benton, ATF

  • Bifur

    A. M. Cassandre, 1929

  • Peignot

    A. M. Cassandre, 1937

  • Futura Display and Kabel

Known for

  • A. M. Cassandre

    Étoile du Nord, 1927; Normandie, 1935

  • Paul Colin

    La Revue Nègre, 1925

  • Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes

    Paris, 1925

  • Georges Lepape & George Barbier

    Gazette du Bon Ton, 1912–25

  • Erté

    Harper's Bazar covers

  • Charles Loupot & Jean Carlu

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Art Deco’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleArt Deco1910–1939 · Western Europe, North America, Global / networked

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton & Ghislaine Wood (eds.), Art Deco 1910–1939 (V&A Publications, 2003)
  2. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.