A dictionary of design styles, written from the works themselves.
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キネティック・アート / 1950s–1970s / Style / Geometric Abstraction
Work defined by the condition that it actually moves, or that its image changes as the viewer moves. Mobiles, motor drives and layered grids producing moiré make time a structural element of the work. The foundation of the idea that motion itself is something to be designed.
Actual movement by wind or motor / Moiré produced by layered grids / Images that change with the viewer's position / Repeating modules
434
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新表現主義 / 1978–1990 / Style / Postwar Abstract Painting
An international current in which large formats, violent brushwork and subjects from history and myth returned, in reaction against the asceticism of Minimal and Conceptual art. Its raw draughtsmanship and layers of grime feed directly into the temperature of 1980s record sleeves and magazine layouts.
Large formats and coarse brushwork / Subjects from myth and history / Heavy use of muddied colour and black / Mixed-in materials and physical thickness
435
ネオ・ジオ / 1984–1992 / Style / Geometric Abstraction
A 1980s New York current that re-quoted the vocabulary of geometric abstraction and Minimalism as signs of the commodity society. Smooth industrial paint, fluorescent colour and the gloss of ready-made goods slide abstraction's purity sideways into the imagery of consumption. Geometry as critique.
Smooth surfaces of industrial paint / Fluorescent, artificial colour / The gloss and finish of ready-made goods / Compositions like schematic diagrams
436
メルツ / 1919–1948 / Style / Avant-garde
A one-man movement flying as its banner a single word clipped from a bank advertisement, building compositions out of nothing but discards such as tickets, wrapping paper and torn type. Treating rubbish as structural material, and placing typographic fragments abstractly, it settled the vocabulary of collage and magazine design.
Pasted refuse such as tickets and wrappers / Fragments of torn type and numerals / Diagonal axes of construction / The colour of aged paper
437
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ポエティスム / 1923–1934 / Style / Avant-garde
The programme of the Czech avant-garde group Devětsil, extending poetry onto the page and into life itself. Its 'picture poems' combining photomontage with type, its compositions of circles and diagonals, and its vivid two-colour printing turned poetry books, magazines and posters into one continuous field of experiment.
Photomontage juxtaposed with type / Compositions of circles and diagonals / Two vivid, restricted colours / Typography as poetry
438
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ユニスム / 1923–1936 / Style / Geometric Abstraction
A Polish theory holding that a picture should contain neither contrast nor centre, existing instead as a single homogeneous organism. The hierarchy of figure and ground is erased, and the colour surface continues with equal weight to the very edge. The theoretical ancestor of the uniform grid and all-over composition.
Elimination of centre and contrast / Colour surfaces continuing equally to the edge / Erasure of the figure-ground hierarchy / All-over fields built from minute differences
439
フォトリアリズム / 1968–1980s / Style / Postwar American Art
A movement that transfers the photograph itself onto the canvas, rebuilding by hand the quantity of information a mechanical eye records. Shop-window reflections, the warp of chrome, diner neon: the subject is fixed on the surface together with the photograph's own focus, grain and chromatic fringing. What is painted is not what was seen but the fact that a camera saw it that way.
Reflections and highlights taken from the photograph / Depth of field painted exactly as the lens gave it / Commercial subjects drawn from the city / A smooth surface with every brushmark erased
440
マジック・リアリズム / 1925–1970s / Style / Painting Techniques
Painting whose handling is scrupulously realist, yet whose light, placement and silence tip reality one notch out of true. It uses none of Surrealism's distortions; instead it sets ordinary things down with uncanny clarity, summoning unease and stillness at once. The name comes from German art criticism of 1925.
Hard, evenly distributed light / Description of uncanny clarity / Figures and objects held motionless / Arrangements that are never explained
441
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ルミニズム / 1850–1875 / Style / American Modern Art
An American landscape manner in which the brushmark is erased from a smooth surface and atmospheric light is graded in stages to the horizon. Figures are small, water lies still as a mirror, and light itself becomes the subject. A textbook of composition for anyone designing stillness.
A smooth surface with the brushmark erased / Composition built on an emphatic horizon / Atmospheric light graded in stages / Water held as a mirror
442
トーナリズム / 1880–1915 / Style / American Modern Art
An American landscape manner that covers the whole picture in a single tone and dissolves contour into mist and dusk. A narrow range of greys, blue-greys and browns with softened edges produces the vagueness of a landscape held in memory. Feeling designed through a restricted palette.
A picture covered by a single tone / The light of mist and dusk / Contours that dissolve / A narrow range of greys and browns
443
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アメリカン・リージョナリズム / 1930–1943 / Style / American Modern Art
A movement in Depression-era America that refused the European avant-garde and painted the farming and labour of the Midwest in realist terms. Rolling hills, stylised figures and legible narrative became national imagery by way of murals, magazines and postage stamps. The classic case of a region turned into a style.
Compositions of rolling hills and farmland / Stylised, plain-spoken figures / Scenes with a clearly legible narrative / Colour keyed to the earth
444
シンクロミズム / 1912–1918 / Style / Geometric Abstraction
The first abstract movement to originate in America, holding that colour itself could be structure on the analogy of musical harmony. Planes laid out in spectral order rotate and generate depth, and form follows colour rather than preceding it. The work titles, Synchromies or chords of colour, were the programme itself.
Planes ordered along the spectrum / A composition that turns in a vortex / Depth generated by colour alone / Titles borrowed from music
445
ネオ・ダダ / 1953–1965 / Style / Postwar American Art
A postwar current that answered the inwardness of Abstract Expressionism by bringing household objects, printed matter and taxidermy onto the picture, working in the gap between art and life. It inherited Dada's gestures while making the materials of consumer society into structural components. The branching point immediately before Pop art.
Ready-made objects brought onto the picture / Printed matter transferred by silkscreen / Forms halfway between painting and object / Traces of erasing, layering and soiling
446
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ヌーヴォー・レアリスム / 1960–1970 / Style / Postwar Abstract Painting
A group that declared, in Paris in 1960, the direct appropriation of reality. Layers of torn posters, compressed car bodies and accumulated refuse make the city itself into the work without passing through depiction. The stance of selecting material rather than working it laid the ground for all later assemblage.
Layers of posters torn back / Accumulations of identical objects / Compressed industrial products / Material chosen rather than worked
447
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リリカル・アブストラクション / 1947–1970s / Style / Postwar Abstract Painting
Abstraction that leans neither on geometric discipline nor on violent gesture, assembling a lyric out of flowing strokes and bleeding colour. The name was born in Paris and was later applied in America to thinly painted, stained canvases. A reference point whenever softness and lightness have to be designed.
Flowing brushwork / Layers of bleed and overlap / Light, transparent colour / Composition without a centre
448
ハードエッジ・ペインティング / 1959–1970s / Style / Geometric Abstraction
Painting that keeps every boundary perfectly sharp and builds the picture out of flat planes of colour alone. Brushwork and gradation are excluded, so the edge of a plane becomes the only event. The precise edge obtained by masking is the direct ancestor of later flat design and vector work.
Perfectly sharp boundaries between planes / Flat colour with no gradation / A few large planes only / The shape itself determining the support
449
ファンク・アート / 1960s–1970s / Style / Postwar American Art
A movement in ceramics and sculpture around the San Francisco Bay Area that deliberately soiled good taste and the authority of abstraction alike. Garish colour, bodily humour and the wilful misuse of craft materials laugh at the hierarchy of art itself. An early precedent for treating coarseness as a strategy.
Garish glaze colours / Bodily, off-colour motifs / Craft materials deliberately misused / Finishes that keep their handmade roughness
450
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パターン・アンド・デコレーション / 1975–1985 / Style / Ornament
A movement that argued head-on with modernism's premise that ornament is inferior. It brought the repetitions of Islamic geometry, quilts, wallpaper and textiles onto large canvases and placed women's handwork and non-Western idioms at the centre of art. The starting point for treating decoration as a political question.
Repeating pattern covering the whole surface / Quotation of quilts and textiles / Reference to non-Western ornament / All-over composition without borders
451
アール・ブリュット / 1945– / Style / Subculture Style
A concept framed to name work made outside art education and the art market, relying on nothing but a system of its own. Repetition filling the whole surface, private alphabets and sign systems, and the exhaustive reuse of materials recur across it. Less a style than the name for the conditions under which a style arises.
A surface filled with no margin left / Private systems of letters and signs / Exhaustive reuse of the materials to hand / A self-sufficient world built by repetition
452
エストリデンティスモ / 1921–1927 / Style / Avant-garde
A Mexican avant-garde that shouted its praise of the post-revolutionary city, of radio waves and machines. Sharp woodcut lines, type running on the diagonal and imagery of cables and aerials erupted over a few years through magazines and handbills. The moment Latin American vanguardism found a speed of its own.
Sharp woodcut lines / Type set on the diagonal / Imagery of cables, aerials and machinery / The hard contrast of two-colour printing
453
アントロポファジア / 1928–1930s / Aesthetic / Brazilian Avant-garde
A Brazilian programme that took cannibalism as its metaphor: do not refuse European culture, eat it and turn it into your own blood. Its affirmation of mixture as a method rather than a weakness has run underneath Brazilian design, music and architecture ever since.
The deliberate digestion of imported styles / Mixture with indigenous imagery / Motifs of the enlarged body / Primary colours and a tropical range
454
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インディヘニスモ / 1920s–1950s / Style / Avant-garde
A movement, centred on the Andean countries, that made the bodies, dress and land of indigenous people the subject of the nation. It took local frame and local colour as its standard in place of a European ideal, and spread through painting, printmaking, photography and architectural ornament. It shifted the question of what beauty is measured against.
Depiction of indigenous bodies and dress / The colour range of Andean earth and sky / Monumental mass in the figure / Quotation of pre-Columbian ornament
455
クレアシオニスモ / 1916–1930s / Layout / Experimental Typography
A movement begun in Chile and carried through Paris, which declared that poetry does not copy nature but creates new facts. It produced visual poems in quantity, arranging letters as shapes and making the border between language and page a subject of experiment. With Ultraismo, one of the two pillars of the Spanish-language avant-garde.
Letters arranged as shapes / Lines of verse recomposed visually / Type without ornament / The white ground used as a component
456
アエロピットゥーラ / 1929–1939 / Style / Italian Avant-garde
The late development of Italian Futurism, which declared the view from an aircraft to be the condition of painting. Plunging perspective, whirling cloud and an earth that turns over fix the sensation of speed and altitude on the canvas. A rare case of a style made out of the height of the viewpoint.
Plunging perspective / Whirling cloud and atmosphere / Ground inverted and rotating / Colour suggesting metallic sheen
457
ノヴェチェント・イタリアーノ / 1922–1943 / Style / Painting Techniques
A movement that, after the avant-garde had dismantled form, sought a return to the mass and stillness of Italian classicism. Simplified, solid bodies, subdued earth colour and emphatically frontal composition became the vocabulary of interwar public building and mural painting. A leading case of the return to order, and one that has to be read together with its closeness to the regime.
Simplified, solid bodies / Emphatically frontal composition / Subdued earth colour / Mass recalling classical sculpture
458
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イタリア合理主義 / 1926–1943 / Style / Modern Architecture
An Italian movement that set out to make the abstraction of modern architecture and the classicism of the Mediterranean hold at the same time. What looks like a white box is in fact carrying ancient proportion in the rhythm of its bays, the depth of its overhangs and the planes of its marble. A textbook for refusing to set the modern against the traditional.
White volumes and a regular rhythm of bays / Deep overhangs and bands of shadow / Marble set against glass / Classical proportion, translated
459
ストリップト・クラシシズム / 1920s–1950s / Style / Modern Architecture
The manner of government and memorial building in which classical architecture is shorn of ornament, leaving only proportion, axis and the rhythm of the columns. That it still reads as classical without ornament made it a cheap means of speaking authority. Important as a case in which the minimal and the intimidating live together.
The rhythm of columns stripped of ornament / A strong axis and symmetry / Smooth planes of stone / Walls without large openings
460
チカーノ・アート / 1965– / Style / Printmaking and Social Movements
An expression born out of the Mexican American civil rights movement. Murals, silkscreened posters, lowriders and lettering form one continuous vocabulary, and Aztec imagery, Catholic devotional figures and mixed English-Spanish lettering share a single surface. A case in which a movement produced a style.
The narrative composition of the mural / Aztec and Catholic imagery placed side by side / Bilingual lettering / The strong flat colour of silkscreen
461
印象主義 / 1860s–1880s / Style / Painting Techniques
A movement that went outdoors and caught light itself with rapid strokes. It abandoned the contour line, laid shadows in complementary colors rather than black, and painted the same subject differently at each hour of the day. Nearly every avant-garde that followed defined itself by agreeing or disagreeing with it.
Short, divided touches of paint / Shadows made without black / Natural light outdoors / Composition that catches an instant
462
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ポスト印象主義 / 1880s–1900s / Style / Painting Techniques
A collective name for painters who found the improvisation of Impressionism insufficient and recovered structure, symbol and emotion, each in their own way. It is not one style but several answers standing side by side, among them pointillism, flat fields of color and surging brushwork. Twentieth century abstraction branched off from here.
A constructed order of brushstrokes / Flat, forceful fields of color / Undulating line that carries emotion / Inquiry into form ahead of subject
463
ルネサンス / 14th–16th century / Style / Historical Styles
A movement that rediscovered ancient proportion and the human body and fixed three dimensions on a flat surface through linear perspective. Mathematics became the common language of painting and architecture, and the norms of the next five hundred years, symmetry, the classical orders and the golden ratio, were established here.
One point linear perspective / The classical orders and symmetry / Composition based on the proportions of the body / A clear triangular composition
464
新古典主義 / 1760s–1830s / Style / Historical Styles
A movement that turned back to ancient simplicity, prompted by the excavations at Pompeii and reacting against the decorative excess of Rococo. Contours are hard, color is held down, and the subjects preach civic virtue. States of the revolutionary period chose this style as their own face.
Hard, clear contour lines / A restrained number of colors / Ancient subjects and dress / Shallow, stage like space
465
ラファエル前派 / 1848–1900s / Style / Fin de Siècle Art
An English brotherhood that discarded the formulas established after Raphael and tried to return to the clarity of the early Renaissance. Transparent paint over a white ground made the color uncannily sharp, and because every detail is worked to the same degree, the eye has nowhere to rest.
Brilliant color raised from a white ground / Equal density of description in every corner / Medieval and literary subjects / Botanical accuracy in natural things
466
ゴシック・リヴァイヴァル / 1740s–1900s / Style / Historical Styles
A movement that deliberately chose the pointed arch and the verticality of the Middle Ages again, in objection to industrialization and to classicism. It was not simple nostalgia. It created the idea that choosing a style is an argument about morality and national character.
The pointed arch and an emphasis on the vertical / Rib vaults and pinnacles / Stone used together with iron / Ornament drawn from medieval manuscripts
467
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創作版画 / 1904–1960s / Style / Japanese Woodblock Prints
A movement that rejected the division of labor among designer, carver and printer and declared that one person draws, carves and prints. It chose to leave the trace of the maker's hand rather than technical perfection, taking the opposite road from the shin-hanga of the same years.
Coarse lines that keep the marks of the knife / Self drawn, self carved, self printed / Tolerance for distortion and uneven inking / Subjects personal to the artist
468
日本画 / 1880s– / Style / East Asian Painting
A modern framework that redefined Japanese painting from the side of its materials, mineral pigment, animal glue, washi and silk, in response to the influx of Western painting. Its character is a compromise led by material, keeping traditional technique while modernizing subject and composition.
The grain and color of mineral pigment / Layers built up with animal glue / The white of the silk or paper ground / Contour line and flatness preserved
469
劇画 / 1957–1970s / Style / Illustration Styles
The name Tatsumi Yoshihiro raised in order to separate his work from manga for children. With a thin drawn line, heavy shadow and cinematic panel flow, it treated adult social themes and violence. It decisively widened the range of subjects comics could take on afterwards.
Thin, hard drawn line / Strong light and dark with solid black / Cinematic panel division / Realistic bodies and backgrounds
470
少女漫画 / 1950s– / Style / Illustration Styles
A field that built its own grammar for translating psychology into space. Panels are broken open, flowers and stars scatter across the background, and the inner voice runs out into the margins. The large eyes and the overlaid panels are devices for drawing the flow of feeling rather than the flow of time.
Figures and panels that cross the frame / Flowers and light streaming through the background / Eyes drawn large and worked in detail / Monologue spilling into the margins
471
アニメ絵 / 1960s– / Style / Animation Techniques
The drawing conventions Japanese television animation accumulated in order to deliver the most information from the fewest drawings. A unified, sign like face, clarity of contour, and speed produced by held drawings and effects have influenced drawing styles around the world.
Eyes and nose placed as signs / Contour lines of even weight / Painting that splits shading into two steps / Held drawings used together with speed lines
472
マテリアルデザイン / 2014– / Style / Google UI
A design system that reduces the physical metaphor of paper and ink to rules of shadow and overlap. Elements are given elevation, shadow states the hierarchy, and motion carries physical cause and effect. It became the model for UI design being distributed as a system. The 2021 revision added colour derived from the device wallpaper, so the palette differs from one user to the next.
Hierarchy and shadow expressed by elevation / Surfaces overlapping like sheets of paper / Motion that shows cause and effect / A standardized unit of spacing
473
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絞り染め / 8th century– / Technique / Textile Traditions
A technique in which cloth is stitched, bound or clamped between boards before dyeing, so that only the parts under pressure stay white. The result is left to the strength of the craftsman's hands and the movement of the cloth, and no two pieces come out alike even from the same pattern.
The bled white left by binding / Regular grain from stitch resist / Geometric ground patterns from board clamping / A texture that keeps the relief of the cloth
474
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絣 / ancient– / Technique / Textile Traditions
A technique in which the threads are bound and dyed before weaving, calculated so that the pattern appears only once the cloth is woven. A slight shift of the threads blurs the outline, and that wavering is the fingerprint of ikat. Design and chance live in the same process.
Pattern edges where the outline bleeds / Warp and weft dyed separately / Calculated placement of color / Wavering caused by shifts in the weave
475
墨流し / 12th century– / Technique / Decorated Paper
A technique in which concentric rings of ink dropped on the surface of water are disturbed by breath or brush and then lifted onto paper. The flow that appears on each sheet cannot be repeated, and from Heian period decorated papers to contemporary bookbinding it has continued as a method for inviting chance on purpose.
Streamlines of disturbed concentric rings / Layers made by the density of the ink / A pattern different on every sheet / Edges that keep the tension of the water surface
476
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多色石版 / 1830s–1930s / Technique / Planographic Printing
Multicolor printing in which a separate lithographic stone is prepared for each color and the stones are overlaid in exact register. A dozen or more stones built up an intensity like oil paint and sent reproductions, labels, posters and cards into the world in quantity. The popularization of color printing begins here.
Dense color built from a dozen or more stones / Slight misregister between the stones / Flat solids used together with stipple / Border ornament used together with gold
477
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イズニク陶器 / 15th–17th century / Style / Ceramic Styles
The pottery reached by the Ottoman kilns, setting brilliant blue and red on a white body. Tulips and carnations turn in spirals around the curve of the vessel, and on the wall tiles of a mosque geometry and plant ornament coexist on a single surface.
The brilliance of a white body under transparent glaze / Cobalt blue and a red that stands in relief / Spiralling plant ornament / A continuous composition turning around a curved surface
478
文人画 / 11th century– / Style / East Asian Painting
Painting made by scholar officials rather than professional painters, not to sell but to show their own spirit. It valued the spirit of the brush above skill and treated poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal as equals on one sheet. At the core of the style is a refusal to fear looking unskilled.
Withered line from a dry brush / Poem, calligraphy and seal sharing one sheet / Pale gradations of ink / A stance that never displays skill
479
プラチナ / 1997–2001 / Style / Apple UI
Apple's own name for the default appearance of Mac OS 8, shipped alongside the Appearance Manager, a framework built so the entire look could later be swapped for another. It drains the color out of the interface and works in grays alone, embossing whatever can be pressed and flattening whatever cannot until it merges with the background. The newly thickened window frame was a signal that the window could now be dragged by any edge.
Windows and controls built entirely from desaturated grays / Live controls carry a bevel and stand up, while disabled ones go flat and sink into the same gray as the background / Thick molded window frames sitting next to modal dialogs that have almost no frame at all / A collapse box at the right end of the title bar, and pop up menus raised into buttons with a double triangle
480
アップル・デスクトップ・インターフェース / 1984–1997 / Style / Apple UI
This is the design language Apple named itself, in the 1987 guidelines book whose subtitle reads The Apple Desktop Interface. Working with one bit of black and white, it wrote down a house style: halftone dot patterns standing in for gray, rounded window corners, a title bar of stacked horizontal rules, and a heavy bitmap face.
Two tones only, black and white, with gray faked by a checkerboard of black dots / Window corners are rounded and the title bar carries several thin horizontal rules / A menu bar pinned to the top edge of the screen, the Apple mark sitting at its left end / Chicago, a heavy bitmap face whose letters are packed into a cell of 9 by 7 dots
IndexStyle is not a list of every term used around design. An independent entry must describe a visual language that can be recognised, reproduced and distinguished from its neighbours. Editorial standard