Stylogenyin the style of Glasgow Style

Craft & organic · 1890–1914 · Western Europe

Glasgow Style

Also known as The Glasgow Four, Spook School, Scottish Art Nouveau

Glasgow's distinctive answer to Art Nouveau, formed around Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret and Frances Macdonald and Herbert MacNair at the Glasgow School of Art. It sets attenuated, ghostly figures and tight rosebuds against long vertical lines and small square lattices in tall, symmetrical compositions, balancing Celtic and Japanese restraint against continental exuberance.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

01

How it works

  • Stretch compositions and figures vertically, elongating bodies into tall, column-like silhouettes.
  • Counterpoint long straight verticals and small square grids with a few tight, stylised rosebuds or seed-pods.
  • Keep compositions symmetrical and frontal, concentrating ornament in small, precise clusters.
  • Draw lettering by hand as attenuated capitals with unusually high or low crossbars.
  • Work in a cool, limited palette of white, black, silver, rose and lilac.

Glasgow School of Art, Scotland

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
Horror vacui, Abundant decoration, Full polychrome, Eclectic mixing, Diagonal axis, Naturalistic depiction

Palette

  • #f4f1ea
  • #1d1b1a
  • #c9768e
  • #8e7aa8
  • #a9aaa5
  • #6f8a6b

Typefaces

  • Charles Rennie Mackintosh's attenuated hand lettering

  • ITC Rennie Mackintosh

    Phill Grimshaw, 1996

  • Talwin Morris's book-cover lettering

Known for

  • Charles Rennie Mackintosh

    The Scottish Musical Review poster, 1896

  • Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh

  • Frances Macdonald MacNair

  • Herbert MacNair

  • Jessie M. King

  • Talwin Morris

    book covers for Blackie & Son

  • Francis 'Fra' Newbery, Glasgow School of Art

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Glasgow Style’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 styleGlasgow Style1890–1914 · Western Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

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. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design
  2. The Hunterian, University of Glasgow: Mackintosh collection (hunterian.gla.ac.uk)
  3. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow: 'Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style' gallery

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