Stylogenyin the style of Pop Art Graphics

Counterculture · 1955–1975 · North America, Western Europe

Pop Art Graphics

Also known as Pop, British Pop, American Pop Art

Pop turned the commercial imagery of post-war consumer culture (comics, packaging, celebrity photographs and advertising) into both its subject and its method. Images are appropriated, enlarged, flattened and repeated; colour is bright and unmodulated; and the printing process itself, from Ben-Day dots to off-register silkscreen, is left visible as a sign of mass production.

Make something in this styleGet advice in this styleMix it with another style

A retro comic-style woman with curled dark hair, a pink headscarf and red nails holds an open bottle of dark fizzy drink. Large yellow “ZING!” lettering fills the top above bright starbursts, bubbles and red, yellow and blue halftone textures.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Appropriate imagery from comics, packaging, advertising and press photographs rather than inventing it.
  • Enlarge the mechanics of reproduction until Ben-Day dots, halftone screens and heavy outlines become the style.
  • Fill shapes with flat, saturated primaries bounded by bold black contours.
  • Repeat a single image in a serial grid, varying only its colour or registration.
  • Isolate an everyday object or celebrity face as an icon on a plain field.
  • Treat lettering as a found sign: comic sound effects, brand names and slogans at billboard scale.

London (Independent Group) and New York

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
Non-representational, Painterly brushwork, Earth & mineral, Floral & vegetal, Brush & pen calligraphy, Calm & contemplative, Spiritual & sacred

Palette

  • #e10600
  • #ffd400
  • #0057b8
  • #111111
  • #fbf8f0
  • #ff5fa2

Typefaces

  • Comic-book hand lettering

  • Franklin Gothic

  • Cooper Black

  • Brass-stencil commercial lettering

    Robert Indiana

Known for

  • Richard Hamilton

    Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, 1956

  • Eduardo Paolozzi

    Bunk! collages

  • Andy Warhol

    Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962; Marilyn Diptych, 1962

  • Roy Lichtenstein

    Whaam!, 1963

  • Robert Indiana

    LOVE, 1964–66

  • Peter Blake & Jann Haworth

    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sleeve, 1967

  • Corita Kent

    serigraphs

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Pop Art Graphics’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 stylePop Art Graphics1955–1975 · North America, Western Europe

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. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design
  2. Lucy R. Lippard, Pop Art (Thames & Hudson, 1966)
  3. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/pop-art

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