A dictionary of design styles, written from the works themselves.
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ジオメトリック・サンセリフ / 1927– / Style / Type Classification
It reduced letterforms to the circle, the line and the triangle, trying to build the letters of a new era out of geometry rather than out of the habits of the hand.
Near-circular bowls / Monoline strokes / Geometric skeletons / Machine-age optimism
146
ヒューマニスト・サンセリフ / 1916– / Style / Type Classification
Keeping the roman's skeleton and proportions without serifs, it stays functional while remembering the hand, which made it the standard for public signage.
Roman proportions / Open apertures / Gentle stroke modulation / High legibility at small sizes
147
木活字ディスプレイ / 1827– / Technique / Type Classification
Gigantic letters cut from wood for broadside posters created the display vocabulary of extreme condensation, extension and ornament.
Gigantic sizes / Extreme condensing and extending / Carved ornament / Ink scuff and material grain
148
カッパープレート・スクリプト / 17th–18th century– / Style / Lettering
The engraver's thin, fluent line produced the ideal of the written hand, and it settled into the letter of formality, of society and of certificates.
Hairline-and-swell contrast / Continuous strokes / Slanted oval skeleton / Flourishes
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サインペインティング / 19th century– / Technique / Lettering
A trade that paints commercial lettering with brush and paint straight onto buildings and windows, giving the street a lettering that carries the trace of a hand.
Strokes that keep the brush / Shades and outlines / One-shot strokes / Improvised to the site
150
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明朝体 / 19th century– / Style / Type Classification
It regularizes the kaisho skeleton into thin horizontals and thick verticals suited to carving, and with its uroko serifs it still carries the body text of Japanese.
Thin horizontals, thick verticals / Uroko serifs / Kaisho-derived skeleton / Steady text-block color
151
ゴシック体 / late 19th century– / Style / Type Classification
The Japanese sans-serif of nearly even strokes: born for headline emphasis, it grew into the text face of the screen.
Even strokes / No uroko / High visibility / Fit for screen display
152
モノスペース / 1874– / Style / Type Classification
Fixed-width letters born from the typewriter's mechanism, settled as the voice of work-in-progress: drafts, forms and code.
One advance width for all / Widened i, squeezed m / Mechanical rhythm / The air of unfinished work
153
プライベート・プレス / 1891–1930s / Style / Publishing and Editing
A movement answering industrialized printing: type, paper, composition and binding unified under one ideal, remaking the book as a total work of art.
House-designed type / Handmade paper, hand presses / Margins designed by the spread / Illustration united with text
154
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ファッションプレート / 1770s–1930s / Technique / Fashion History
The illustrated medium that delivered the latest fashion in hand-colored prints, the ancestor of the magazine, the illustration and the style drawing.
Hand-colored linework / Idealized poses / Descriptive costume drawing / Periodical format
155
ダンディズム / 1790s– / Style / Fashion History
A menswear aesthetic that makes a work of the self through tailoring, cleanliness and restraint rather than ornament. From it come the plain suit and a long line of self-assertion through dress.
Perfect tailoring / Restrained color / The cleanliness of white linen / Obsession with detail
156
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合理服運動 / 1850s–1900s / Style / Fashion History
A reform movement that refused the corset and the trailing hem and redesigned clothing around health and freedom of movement. In dress it is what functionalism is in design.
Bloomer-type garments / Refusal of the corset / Bicycles and sportswear / Form from function
157
フラッパー / 1920s / Style / Fashion History
The 1920s woman who made the body's liberation visible in a straight silhouette, a short hem and bobbed hair, wearing the same period spirit that Art Deco gave to geometry.
Straight shift dresses / Bobbed hair / Dropped waists / Beads and fringe
158
銘仙 / 1900s–1950s / Style / Fashion History
A popular kimono that carried bold abstract patterns and the bright colors of chemical dye on a cheap ikat technique. It was a Japanese modernism, translating Deco and the avant-garde into everyday dress.
Large abstract patterns / Vivid chemical dyes / Blurred kasuri edges / Everyday experimentation
159
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ズートスーツ / 1930s–1940s / Style / Subculture Style
The earliest street style: suits with wildly exaggerated shoulders and pegged trousers, by which Black and Mexican-American youth asserted their existence in a discriminatory society.
Exaggerated shoulders / Knee-length jackets / Pegged wide trousers / Long watch chains
160
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ニュールック / 1947–1950s / Style / Fashion History
Cinched waists and long skirts of lavish fabric turned away from wartime utility clothing and brought the curve back, opening the golden age of postwar couture.
Hourglass silhouettes / Abundant fabric / Rounded shoulders / Formality restored
161
テディボーイズ / 1950s– / Style / Subculture Style
Working-class youths appropriated Edwardian upper-class dress. Postwar Britain's first youth subculture, it set the pattern for every youth culture that followed.
Long drape jackets / Slim ties / Crepe-soled shoes / The quiff
162
モッズ / late 1950s–1960s / Style / Subculture Style
Slim Italian suits, scooters and modern jazz made a rebellion carried out through refinement, and completed the marriage of consumerism and youth culture.
Slim three-button suits / Military parkas / Scooters and mirrors / The target roundel
163
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ヒッピー・スタイル / 1960s–1970s / Style / Subculture Style
Refusing ready-made clothes and mixing handwork, folk dress and secondhand finds, it made the counterculture visible and brought DIY and eclecticism into fashion.
Handwork and embroidery / Mixed folk dress / Customized denim / Long hair, back to nature
164
アイビー・スタイル / 1950s– / Style / Fashion History
The practical menswear system of America's East Coast universities, whose button-downs and blazers taught a broken-in correctness that reached the world through Japan and became the standard of trad.
Button-down shirts / 3/2-roll blazers / Loafers / Deliberately relaxed wear
165
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ヒップホップ・ファッション / 1970s– / Style / Street Style
Bronx youth culture turned sportswear and gold into a language of self-expression, and in fifty years it travelled from the street to the center of luxury.
Sneakers and tracksuits / Gold chains / Oversize / Logos flaunted and remade
166
ゴス・ファッション / late 1970s– / Style / Subculture Style
The aesthetics of black dress born from post-punk music, borrowing Victorian mourning and horror-film signs to make darkness a communal style.
Black head to toe / Victorian borrowings / Pale skin, dark eyes / Silver jewelry
167
ロリータ・ファッション / 1980s– / Style / Street Style
A Japanese street style referencing Rococo and girls' culture, building a community that constructs cuteness for oneself, not for the gaze of others.
Bell-shaped skirts / Frills and lace / Headdresses / Strict coordination rules
168
ギャル / 1990s– / Style / Street Style
Tans, bleached hair and heavy makeup inverted everything school called correct. Born in Shibuya, it was a communal fashion that magazines and the street updated together.
Tanned skin / Bright hair / Emphatic eye makeup / Shibuya 109 shop culture
169
デコラ / late 1990s– / Style / Street Style
A Harajuku style that layers masses of hairclips and toy-like accessories until sheer quantity becomes the organizing principle. It is maximalism worked out on the body.
Masses of hairpins / Layered accessories / Saturated multicolor / Character goods
170
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サプール / 1920s– / Style / Street Style
The Congolese Society of Ambience-Makers and Elegant People turns the flawless wearing of vivid suits into a practice of dignity. It is a peaceful dandyism whose weapon is dress.
Vivid three-piece suits / Strict color discipline / Gesture and gait / Festivity inside daily life
171
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ストリートウェア / 1980s / Style / Street Style
Puts a large printed image or logo at the center, and shows the body as a broad face of heavy cloth rather than a silhouette.
A logo printed large on chest or back / Heavy hooded and crew sweats / Loose, straight cut / Sneakers at the feet
172
ノームコア / 2013– / Aesthetic / Subculture Style
The trend-forecasting group K-HOLE gave a name to stepping out of the race to differentiate and choosing a plainness that can connect with anyone. Naming it turned fashion discourse on its head.
Plain, standard clothes / No logos / Deliberate ordinariness / Freedom from style
173
スペースエイジ・ファッション / 1960s / Style / Fashion History
The couture avant-garde of the 1960s translated the optimism of the space race into experiments with material, using metal, plastic and geometric cuts to present the body as an object of the future.
Mini A-lines / Metal and plastic / Helmets and goggles / White and silver
174
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ドイツ表現主義映画 / 1919–1927 / Style / Cinematic Visual Styles
Warped sets, painted shadows and extreme contrast turned a character's inner state directly into landscape, bringing a scenery of the mind into cinema.
Warped sets / Painted-on shadows / Oblique compositions / Extreme chiaroscuro
175
ソビエト・モンタージュ / 1924–1930s / Technique / Cinematic Visual Styles
An editing theory that generates meaning from the collision of opposing shots. Meaning lives not in the single image but in the gap between two.
Colliding shots / Rhythmic cutting / Crowds against details / Inserted symbols
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サイレント映画の字幕カード / 1900s–1920s / Technique / Film Technology
Dialogue and description were cut into the film as separate cards of type. This is where cinema and typography first met.
Text cards on black / Ornamental frames / Hand lettering / Alternating rhythm with the action
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テクニカラー / 1922–1950s / Technique / Film Technology
Brought saturated color to cinema by separation negatives and dye transfer, fixing 'color more vivid than reality' in film memory.
Saturated primaries / Dye-transfer depth / Color supervision / Color-coding dream and reality
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イタリアン・ネオレアリズモ / 1943–1952 / Style / Cinematic Visual Styles
Cinema that left the studio to film non-professional actors in the street, taking postwar poverty and daily life as its subject and standing on the side of reality.
Location shooting / Non-professional actors / Available light / Postwar streets
179
ヌーヴェル・ヴァーグ / 1958–1968 / Style / Cinematic Visual Styles
Critics picked up cameras and went out into the street, using handheld shots, jump cuts and self-reference to turn the grammar of film into a playground.
Handheld camera / Jump cuts / Street locations / Cinema about cinema
180
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キアロスクーロ / 16th century– / Technique / Painting Techniques
It carves form out of strong contrast and lets light itself tell the story and carry the feeling. The grammar of that light runs from painting through to film noir.
A single light source / Deep darkness / Form carved by light / Dramatic shadow
181
表現主義 / 1905–1930s / Style / Avant-garde
Painting what was felt rather than what was seen. Warped forms, violent brushwork and unnatural color moved the anxiety of the city and the age straight onto the surface.
Distorted form / Unnatural color / Rough brush and cut / Urban anxiety
182
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クーフィー体 / 8th century onward / Style / Calligraphic Traditions
Keeps the uprights short and draws the horizontals long, massing letters of straight strokes and right angles into a band of even height.
Horizontals drawn long / Short angular uprights / Letters turning at right angles / Lines massed into an even band
183
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ペルシア細密画 / 13th–17th century / Style / Persian and Indian Painting
Multiple viewpoints, jewel-like pigments and a composition unafraid of empty space paint poetry and history as complete worlds contained inside a book.
Multi-viewpoint space / Saturated mineral pigments / Ornamentalized nature / Script united with image
184
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カーリーガート絵画 / 19th century–1930s / Style / Persian and Indian Painting
Pilgrims bought these paintings by the sheet at the temple gates of Calcutta, where thick contours and bold omission rendered gods and social satire in the same hand.
Thick fluent contours / Bold omission / Watercolor transparency / Gods beside satire
185
ミティラー画（マドゥバニ） / traditional–present / Style / Persian and Indian Painting
Women of the Mithila region in Bihar have painted these festival images on walls and floors for generations. Pattern crowds out every empty space, and the mythic imagery is still alive and still being updated.
Pattern filling the plane / Double outlines / Mythic imagery / Natural pigments
186
バティック（ジャワ更紗） / traditional–present / Technique / Textile Traditions
Javanese cloth resisted with wax and dyed over and over again. The line drawn by the canting builds a pattern system that also speaks of rank, region and rite.
Crackle of the wax resist / The canting's line / Layered indigo and soga brown / A semantic pattern system
187
ワヤン・クリ（影絵芝居） / traditional–present / Style / Stage Design
Javanese shadow theater works pierced leather puppets between a lamp and a screen, and in doing so perfected a formal language of contour, silhouette and the stylized profile.
Pierced leather puppets / Stylized profiles / Shadow and light source / All-night performances
188
ケンテ / 17th century– / Style / Textile Traditions
The strip-woven cloth of Ghana's Asante and Ewe gives every color and every pattern a name and a meaning, so that wearing it makes a statement.
Strips sewn into cloth / High-key gold, red, green / Named patterns / Ceremonial dress
189
アディンクラ / 19th century– / Style / Symbol Systems
The Akan compressed their proverbs into figures and stamped them onto cloth with gourd blocks. One shape carries one thought, which makes the set a working graphic language.
Figures that carry proverbs / Gourd-stamp printing / Repeating grids / Cloth of mourning and rite
190
ボゴランフィニ（泥染布） / traditional–present / Technique / Textile Traditions
Bamana cloth from Mali is drawn with fermented river mud. Iron reacting with plant dye yields a black-and-cream geometry that records story and protection.
Mud-dyed black and cream / Hand-drawn geometry / Signs that tell stories / Each cloth unique
191
ンデベレの家壁画 / 1940s– / Style / Mural Traditions
Ndebele women in South Africa paint high-chroma geometry across the walls of their houses. The straight lines are ruled by hand alone, and the house itself becomes a banner of resistance and identity.
Freehand straight lines / Black outlines, primary color / Geometry across whole walls / A women's inherited skill
192
アズレージョ / 15th century– / Style / Ornament
Portugal's blue-and-white tile works as the skin of architecture, opening story, map and ornament onto the street until the city itself can be read as a printed plate.
Blue-and-white tile / Narrative panels wall-high / Repeating pattern / One body with the building
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