A dictionary of design styles, written from the works themselves.
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Search by style name or describe what you are making. Name matches come first; purpose, desired effect and medium add relevant alternatives.
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313
ターミナルUI / 1970s– / Style / UI Expression
The terminal look: monospaced phosphor characters on black. The VT100's green afterglow became the primal image of the computer's face, repeated from hacker cinema to modern CLI tools.
Single phosphor color on black / The monospace grid / A blinking cursor / Scanlines and glow
314
iモード絵文字 / 1998-1999 / Style / Symbol Systems
One hundred and seventy six pictographs that tell faces, weather and things apart using only the placement of dots on a twelve by twelve grid. Shigetaka Kurita drew them for NTT DOCOMO's i-mode, and MoMA holds the original set.
Figures fitted to a twelve by twelve grid / Shapes made of mass rather than of line / Set inline at the size of a letter / Faces, weather and symbols at one coarseness
315
ジェネラティブアート / 1965- / Technique / Digital Art
A way of working in which the maker writes only the rule and the randomness, leaving the drawing to the machine. As in Nees's plotter work, the result is shown as several variants born of one rule.
One simple element repeated to fill the field / Variants of a single rule shown side by side / Repetition drifting in angle and position / A density and precision no hand could reach
316
パウエル・ペラルタのデッキ図像 / 1980s / Style / Illustration Styles
Imagery that fills the whole underside of a deck with a single emblem. Bones, skulls and dragons in heavy outline, set on the board as a team's flag in full knowledge that grinding will wear them away.
One emblem filling the underside of the deck / The figure held symmetrically at the center / Heavy black outline over flat color / A heraldry built from bones and skulls
317
アナログホラー / 2015– / Aesthetic / Internet Aesthetics
A net-born video genre that builds fear out of VHS decay, emergency-broadcast formats and the voice of the classroom film. By turning the signs of public-broadcast trust inside out, it makes the format itself the thing that frightens.
Emergency-broadcast formats / Staged VHS decay / The educational-film voice / Censor-style redactions
318
コテージコア / 2018– / Aesthetic / Internet Aesthetics
The internet aesthetic idealizing the cottage, handcraft and fresh bread: soft natural light and handmade texture rebuilding the pastoral as a reaction to digital fatigue.
Soft natural light / Handmade texture / Wildflowers and baking / The premodern idealized
319
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カワイイ / 1970s– / Aesthetic / Pop
Japan's aesthetic of round contours, big eyes, pastel and looseness that summons the urge to protect. From girls' handwriting and fancy goods it softened the surface of an entire society, from public signage to corporate mascots.
Faces of circles and empty space / Big eyes, elided mouths / Pastel softness / Looseness and defenselessness
320
ローブロウ / 1979– / Style / Illustration Styles
Painting from outside the museum, schooled on hot rods, comics, tattoos and B movies. It renders pop memory in exacting oil technique, and Juxtapoz magazine gave it a home under the name Pop Surrealism.
Pop-culture iconography / Precise classical technique / Uneasy humor / Street-born heraldry
321
カセット・フューチャリズム / 1977–1990s / retro revival / Aesthetic / Visions of the Future
The future as the 1980s pictured it, built from CRTs, physical buttons, thermal paper and squared-off white plastic. Its matte pragmatism is now being reappraised as the counterproposal to sleek science fiction.
CRTs and physical buttons / Squared-off white plastic / Dot-matrix displays / Matte pragmatism
322
ヒプノシス / 1968–1983 / Style / Music Graphics
Thorgerson and Powell's studio brought a photographic surrealism to the record sleeve, staging a burning handshake or a pig adrift in the sky. Trick photography made before CG defined what music looks like when it dreams.
Photographic surrealism / Practical effects and retouching / Riddles refusing explanation / The completeness of the square
323
アメリカン・トラディショナル / 1900s– / Style / Tattoo Styles
The classic American tattoo style, built from heavy black outlines, a short list of pigments and stock motifs like the anchor, the rose and the swallow. Sailor culture and the copying of flash sheets standardized a graphic language worn on skin.
Bold black outlines / A limited red-green palette / Anchor, rose and swallow stock / Flash-sheet reproduction
324
和彫 / Edo period– / Style / Tattoo Styles
Japanese tattooing that took its cue from Kuniyoshi's Suikoden heroes, carving a narrative across the whole back and outward over the body. Ground patterns of wave and cloud wrap each figure in a frame, and the body becomes a single ukiyo-e.
Full-back narrative composition / Wave-and-cloud framing / Ukiyo-e derived imagery / Flow designed to the body
325
テレテキスト・アート / 1974–2012 / revival / Style / Lettering
Screen art made inside broadcast text, a mosaic of 40 by 24 characters in eight fixed colors. The extreme abstraction of Ceefax weather maps and news pages is being revived now as a classic of constraint.
Eight-color mosaic / The 40x24 frame / Pseudo-curves from blocks / The look of broadcast infrastructure
326
紙幣のギヨシェ / 18th century– / Technique / Public Design
The banknote style in which lathe-cut guilloche curves and engraved portraits refuse forgery while making credit visible. America's 1896 Educational Series raised the banknote to allegorical masterpiece.
Continuous guilloche curves / Engraved intaglio portraits / Fine background lathework / Hierarchies of denomination
327
蔵書票 / 15th century– / Style / Publishing and Editing
A small print of ownership pasted to a book's endpaper. Since Dürer, engravers have cut heraldry, allegory and the collector's own exact self-image into a few centimeters, making a private graphic where book culture meets printmaking.
The EX LIBRIS formula / Heraldry and allegory / Precise miniature engraving / The owner's self-image
328
トランプの意匠 / 15th century– / Style / Games and Play
The 52-sheet design polished by centuries of use: double-ended court cards, the semiotics of suits, repeating back patterns. Wear and recognition produced a completeness that is also the prehistory of UI design.
Double-ended court cards / Suit signs / Corner indices / Repeating back patterns
329
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タロットの図像 / 15th century– / Style / Games and Play
From the Visconti gold grounds through Marseille woodcuts to the Waite-Smith narrative scenes: allegory systematized into 78 cards. Its openness to rereading keeps drawing designers in.
Major Arcana allegories / Standardized figures and attributes / Frame, number and title / Signs open to rereading
330
家紋 / Heian period– / Style / Symbol Systems
Japan's crest system that geometrizes plants, animals and objects with compass and line alone. Some twenty thousand patterns designed in black-and-white reversal completed the scalable mark centuries before logo design.
Geometry within the circle / Balance in black-white reversal / Extreme abstraction of nature / Compass-and-ruler construction
331
西洋紋章学 / 12th century– / Style / Symbol Systems
Europe's armorial system, born from the need to tell one man from another on the battlefield. Exact description in the language of blazon, the rule of a limited set of tinctures and a grammar of division and combination add up to a design system that has run for 800 years.
Limited tincture colors / The grammar of shield divisions / Describability in blazon / Stylized animal poses
332
篆刻 / Qin dynasty– / Technique / Calligraphic Traditions
East Asia's seal art: seal script carved in stone, composed in a few square centimeters through the reversal of red and white (zhuwen and baiwen). Participating in paintings as signature, it perfected design inside the small square.
Red-white reversal / Seal-script line design / Composition in centimeters / The texture of carved stone
333
星図の様式 / 17th–19th century / Style / Diagrammatic Expression
The Baroque celestial atlas layering constellation mythology over observation. Cellarius's Harmonia Macrocosmica marks the summit of an age when scientific diagram could also be decorative art.
Myth figures over stars / Concentric celestial structure / Gold and blue coloring / Ornamented cartouches
334
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解剖図の様式 / 1543– / Style / Diagrammatic Expression
The style Vesalius's Fabrica established: muscled bodies posing in landscapes. Scientific accuracy cohabiting with theatrical staging governed the grammar of anatomical plates for centuries.
Posing anatomical figures / Landscape backgrounds / Numbers and leader lines / Woodcut and copperplate precision
335
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ボタニカルアート / 16th century– / Style / Natural History Illustration
The tradition of plant portraiture holding scientific precision and decorative beauty together. Redouté's roses in stipple engraving and hand color established elegance-through-accuracy as a style.
A single plant on white / Dissection details added / The softness of stipple engraving / Transparent hand color
336
ポルトラーノ海図 / 13th–17th century / Style / Diagrammatic Expression
A medieval working sea chart, crossed by radiating rhumb lines. Coastlines and place names run precisely along the vellum while flags and monsters fill the empty water, from a time when a map's usefulness and its ornament had not yet parted.
Radiating rhumb lines / Names perpendicular to coasts / The vellum ground / Flags and monsters as ornament
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