A dictionary of design styles, written from the works themselves.
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ソビエト絵本 / 1920s–1930s / Style / Publishing and Editing
The children's books of the revolutionary avant-garde: Lebedev and others brought constructivist flatness and simple shapes to storytelling, making cheap lithographed picture books a laboratory of 20th-century book design.
Constructivist flatness / Machines and labor simplified / Text and image designed as one / Limited lithographic color
266
脱ネモ体 / 1980s- / Style / Type Classification
Hangul type that gives up fitting each syllable into a square and stacks consonant and vowel as fixed shapes, so height and width change from letter to letter. Ahn Sang-soo's typeface and posters carried the form to a wide audience.
Letter outlines breaking out of the square / Height and width changing letter by letter / Strokes of even weight, geometric in build / Lines whose feet do not align
267
新版画 / 1915–1960s / Style / Japanese Woodblock Prints
The woodblock revival led by publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō: ukiyo-e's carver-printer division joined to Western light and atmosphere. Hasui's nights and rains became the beloved image of a lyric Japan abroad.
The lyricism of night and rain / Western treatment of light / Precision of the carver-printer system / Landscapes of travel
268
剪紙 / 6th century– / Technique / Craft Movements
Chinese paper cutting works red paper with scissors and knife. As window flowers it dresses the windows at the New Year, weaving auspicious patterns and stories out of connected line alone, a positive-negative figure design still transmitted as intangible heritage.
Cutouts in a single red / Line design that stays connected / Auspicious motifs / Light through paper on windows
269
民藝 / 1926– / Style / Craft Movements
Yanagi Sōetsu and his circle found 'the beauty of use' in the everyday wares of unnamed craftsmen. By making anonymity, repetition and utility the measure of healthy form, the movement became the bedrock of Japanese design thought.
Anonymous craftsmanship / Form following use / The steadiness born of repetition / Local materials and hand habits
270
民画 / 17th–19th century / Style / Popular Painting
Unnamed painters of late Joseon Korea made pictures for ordinary people. Tigers and magpies, pictorial ideographs and scholar's-shelf still lifes follow set formulas, but composition unbound by perspective and a streak of humor made them a popular visual language that laughs at authority.
The tiger-and-magpie formula / Free multiple perspective / Humorous exaggeration / Auspicious motifs
271
ドンホー版画 / 17th century– / Style / Popular Prints
The woodblock prints of Vietnam's Đông Hồ village: printed with natural pigments on dó paper coated with ground seashell, New Year pictures like 'The Rat's Wedding' carrying village philosophy in satire and auspice.
Shell-powder paper that glimmers / A limited natural palette / Satire through animals / Renewed each New Year
272
年画 / Song dynasty– / Style / Popular Prints
At the Chinese New Year these woodblock prints go up on doors and interior walls. Door gods, wealth gods and opera scenes in vivid color, with regional styles such as Yangliuqing and Taohuawu, built a visual language centuries deep that later supplied socialist posters with their iconography.
Paired door gods / Saturated auspicious color / Regional workshop styles / Ephemeral, replaced yearly
273
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タンカ / 11th century– / Style / Icon Painting
Tibetan Buddhist scroll paintings render deities and mandalas under strict iconometric rule. Vivid mineral pigment and gold line make them maps for meditation, and because they roll up for travel they sustained a nomadic life of faith.
Strict iconometric rule / The saturation of mineral pigments / Mandala geometry / The rollable scroll format
274
ロシア・イコン / 10th–17th century / continuing / Style / Icon Painting
The icon tradition inherited from Byzantium uses reverse perspective, gold grounds and stylized bodies so that the panel becomes a window for prayer rather than a picture to look at. Rublev's Trinity marks its spiritual summit.
The timelessness of gold ground / Reverse perspective / Stylized bodies / The image as object of prayer
275
エチオピアのイコン / 14th century– / Style / Icon Painting
Large almond eyes, heavy outlines and vivid flat color give the sacred painting of Ethiopian Orthodoxy its own manner. The Byzantine inheritance is rewritten there in an African sense of form.
Large almond-shaped eyes / Bold outlines / Vivid flat color / Folding triptychs
276
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タパ / prehistory– / Technique / Textile Traditions
Across the Pacific islands, bark is beaten out into cloth. Geometric patterns stamped, drawn and smoked onto it serve as communal insignia in ritual and gift exchange, and every island keeps its own pattern system within this Pacific graphic language.
The beaten texture of bark / Repeating geometric pattern / Earth-toned pigments / Great ceremonial sheets
277
コファイファイ / 18th century– / Style / Ornament
Scroll patterns run along the rafters of Māori meeting houses. Built from the koru, the unfurling fern shoot, and worked in red, black and white alone, they unfold symmetry, rotation and reflection as a mathematics of curves that records genealogy and story overhead.
Repeating koru spirals / Red, black and white / Symmetry and reflection / Bands following the rafters
278
カンガ / 1880s– / Style / Textile Traditions
Women along the East African coast wear this printed cloth in a single piece. Its three-part composition of border, central image and Swahili proverb (jina) makes the act of wearing an act of speech.
Border-and-center composition / Swahili proverbs / Bold two-color contrast / Worn in pairs
279
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スウェディッシュ・グレース / 1917–1930 / Style / Scandinavian Design
Between the wars, Sweden laid light ornament and craftsmanship over neoclassical poise. Hald's glass and Asplund's buildings showed a graceful modernity that gave Scandinavian modern its running start.
Neoclassical bones / Light engraved ornament / Delicacy in glass and porcelain / Balance of plainness and grace
280
ブリュッセル様式 / 1958–1960s / Style / Postwar Industrial Design
The bright socialist-bloc modernism named for Czechoslovakia's triumph at Expo 58: asymmetric curves, thin splayed legs and atomic patterns spreading thaw-era optimism from housewares to animation.
Asymmetric organic curves / Thin splayed legs / Atom and star patterns / Pastel against black
281
イランのポスター / 1960s– / Style / Regional Graphics
The Iranian graphic culture Morteza Momayez opened: the line of Persian calligraphy fused with modernist composition, growing a poster tradition that speaks in poetic metaphor across revolution and war.
Calligraphic line as form / Poetic metaphor / The compositional force of Persian script / A restrained palette
282
アフリカの理髪店看板 / 1950s– / Style / Signage and Display
The hand-painted signboards of West African barbershops: numbered haircut samples in a grid, flat repeated faces sitting between product catalogue and portraiture.
Grids of haircut samples / Flat repeated faces / Numbers and hand lettering / Enamel on plywood
283
エブル / 15th century– / Technique / Decorated Paper
Turkish marbling: pigments floated on thickened water, drawn into flowers and swirls with comb and stylus, lifted onto paper. Grown from calligraphy's ground into an art of its own, inscribed by UNESCO.
Flower forms on water (ebru çiçekleri) / Combed wave patterns / The chance of each single sheet / Pairing with calligraphy
284
エクスボート（奉納画） / 18th century– / Style / Popular Painting
Mexico's votive paintings give thanks for deliverance from disaster. Painted on tin, they hold the scene of the crisis, a holy image and a handwritten testimony on one small sheet, and the urgency of the untrained brush drew Kahlo and other modern painters to them.
Small tin panels / Scene, image and testimony in three layers / Naive perspective / Records of accident and miracle
285
プィーサンカ / prehistory– / Technique / Craft Movements
Ukraine's Easter eggs are dyed by wax resist. Lines of hot wax and repeated dye baths build geometry and the tree of life in layers across the curved shell, where motif and color carry a whole system of prayer in miniature.
White wax-resist lines / Layered dye colors / Banded division of the shell / Geometry and the tree of life
286
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モラ / late 19th century– / Technique / Textile Traditions
Guna women in Panama make reverse appliqué. Layers of colored cloth are cut back and stitched down until every contour ripples in several lines, printmaking in fabric that is worn daily as the panels of a blouse.
Layered reverse appliqué / Multiple contour lines / Maze-like ground filling / Animals and geometry
287
アディレ / 19th century– / Technique / Textile Traditions
The indigo resist cloth of Yoruba women: raffia ties and cassava-paste painting and stenciling reserve white patterns against deep indigo, weaving proverbs and signs into the contrast.
Indigo-and-white resist patterns / Cassava-paste hand painting / Grid-divided imagery / A sign system holding proverbs
288
デルフト焼 / 1600s– / Style / Ceramic Styles
Longing for Chinese porcelain, Delft produced tin-glazed pottery of its own. Windmills, ships and Eastern scenes painted in blue alone fixed 'blue and white' as a Western language of table and room, chinoiserie put into practice.
Painting in blue alone / White tin-glaze ground / Eastern motifs translated / From tiles to tableware
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