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A dictionary of design styles, written from the works themselves.

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241

Light and Space

ライト・アンド・スペース / 1960s– / Style / Geometric Abstraction

The Southern California movement that takes light itself, spatial perception and the limits of vision as material. Turrell's openings to the sky and Irwin's scrims make the act of seeing the artwork.

Objects erased / Rooms filled with light / Thresholds of perception / Apertures to the sky

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242

Modernist Exhibition Design

モダニズム展示デザイン / 1920s–1940s / Style / Exhibition Design

The modernist movement that designed the exhibition as printed matter you walk through. Lissitzky's dynamic installations and Bayer's extended field of vision invented display as an information space that edits the visitor's path and gaze.

Choreographed circulation / Tilted panels / Photography at giant scale / Compositions wrapping the field of view

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243

Bakst Stage Design

バクストの舞台美術 / 1909-1914 / Style / Stage Design

Sets and costumes rebuilt as a painter's single picture. Jewel-deep colors laid over one another, with swirling curves and orientalist pattern drawing the dancing body itself into the design.

Combinations of jewel deep color / Pattern laid over pattern in the costumes / Swirling Art Nouveau curves / Orientalist headdresses and loose trousers

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244

Bauhaus Stage

バウハウスの舞台 / 1921–1929 / Style / Stage Design

Schlemmer's stage workshop turned the body into geometry. Spheres and cones in the Triadic Ballet costumes set the human figure dancing as a form in space, and performance art traces its origin to them.

Geometrized bodies / Costumes of spheres and cones / Three acts by color / Choreography as spatial figure

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245

Constructivist Stage

構成主義舞台美術 / 1922–1930s / Style / Stage Design

Revolutionary Russia's style that discarded painted backdrops for a bare working machine on stage. The turning structure Popova built for The Magnanimous Cuckold remade stage design as working construction.

Bare structures / Turning wheels and ramps / No backdrop / Biomechanics of the actor's body

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246

New Stagecraft

新舞台芸術 / 1890s–1930s / Style / Stage Design

The stage reform that dropped painted realism for light, levels and simple volumes shaping space for music and the body. Appia's living light and Craig's moving screens created the very profession of lighting design.

Form made by light / Abstract space of steps and ramps / Painted flats banished / Compositions of simple volumes

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247

Commedia dell'Arte

コンメディア・デッラルテ / 16th–18th century / Style / Stage Design

Masks and fixed costumes let Italy's improvised comedy name each character at a glance. Harlequin's lozenges and Pulcinella's white belong to a system of visual signs that art, fashion and graphics have never stopped quoting.

Leather half-masks / Harlequin's lozenge pattern / Type-defining costume / Exaggerated gesture

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248

Kumadori

隈取 / 1673– / Style / Stage Design

Kabuki makeup that exaggerates muscle and vein in red and indigo lines, diagramming a role's character on the face. With Sharaku's actor prints, the origin of the strong graphic face in Japanese design.

Red and indigo kuma lines / Musculature drawn as pattern / White ground / A color code of character

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249

Beggarstaff Style

ベガースタッフ・スタイル / 1894–1899 / Style / Advertising Posters

Nicholson and Pryde's cut-paper poster style: contours dropped, subjects summarized in flat shapes of few colors. Commercially unsuccessful in its day, its radical economy anticipated the 20th-century poster.

Flat cut-paper shapes / Omitted contours / Large fields of few colors / Boldness that looked unfinished

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250

ROSTA Windows

ロスタの窓 / 1919–1921 / Style / Printmaking and Social Movements

During the civil war the ROSTA news agency pasted stencil-replicated poster serials in the windows of empty shops. Mayakovsky and others turned the news into comic-strip panels of simple shapes and rhymed verse, inventing the prototype of rapid-response graphics.

Simple stencil shapes / Storytelling in panels / Red and black as signal colors / Rhymed captions

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251

Lubok

ルボーク / 17th–19th century / Style / Popular Prints

Russia's popular print: thick outlines, flat hand-coloring, image and text sharing the sheet, circulating sacred stories and satire cheaply. The avant-garde rediscovered it in the 20th century as Russia's native form.

Thick outlines / Flat hand-coloring / Image and text together / Satire and story

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252

Épinal Print

エピナル版画 / 1796– / Style / Popular Prints

Pellerin of Épinal mass-produced popular prints whose clear outlines and stencil color told stories, armies and morals. They shaped popular vision so completely that 'image d'Épinal' came to mean a rosy cliché.

Clear outlines / Bright stencil coloring / Stories in panels / Morals and hero tales

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253

Posada's Calaveras

ポサダのカラベラ / 1880s–1913 / Style / Popular Prints

The skeleton satires Posada engraved for Mexican broadsides: dressed-up calaveras laughing at class and death alike. La Catrina became a national icon of the Day of the Dead and Mexican graphics.

Personified skeletons / Rough zinc-etched lines / Sharing the sheet with broadside type / Satire that laughs at death

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254

Push Pin Style

プッシュピン・スタイル / 1954–1980s / Style / Illustration Styles

Glaser and Chwast's studio worked as the counterpoint to Swiss rationalism, building an illustration-led eclecticism out of historical styles, comics and popular prints. Fat contours and ornamental planes of color repainted the magazines and records of the 1960s and 70s.

Eclectic historical revival / Fat contours, ornamental color / Illustration-led composition / Wit and quotation

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255

Grapus — AI-generated interpretation
AI interpretation, not a reference

Grapus

グラピュス / 1970–1991 / Style / Regional Graphics

The French collective was born out of May '68. Hand-scrawled letters, splatters and graffiti over photographs brought a festive roughness to posters for politics, theater and city halls, and made resistance to polish into a style.

Rough hand-drawn lettering / Splatter and graffiti / Interventions on photographs / Anonymous collective authorship

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256

Swiss Punk Typography

スイス・パンク・タイポグラフィ / 1970s–1980s / Style / Experimental Typography

In Basel, the home of Swiss style, Weingart took the grid apart from the inside. Exploded letterspacing, stepped settings and layered film exposures turned rebellion within discipline into New Wave typography.

The grid dismantled / Exploding letterspacing / Stepped compositions / Layered-film textures

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257

Chinese Propaganda Poster

中国プロパガンダ・ポスター / 1949–1980s / Style / Regional Graphics

The mass-distributed persuasion pictures of the PRC from founding through the Cultural Revolution: the nianhua folk tradition fused with Soviet socialist realism into red suns, flushed cheeks and arms pointing to the future.

Dominance of red / Idealized workers / Compositions pointing upward / Flat color from the nianhua tradition

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258

Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster

ボリウッド手描きポスター / 1930s–1990s / Style / Regional Graphics

Mumbai's poster workshops painted film advertising in oil on giant canvases. Saturated color, montages of several scenes and exaggerated star faces ruled the Indian street for half a century, until digital printing arrived.

Oil-paint brushwork / Saturated color / Exaggerated faces, multiple scenes / Hand-painted Devanagari lettering

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259

Ghanaian Movie Poster — AI-generated interpretation
AI interpretation, not a reference

Ghanaian Movie Poster

ガーナ手描き映画ポスター / 1980s–2000s / Style / Regional Graphics

Ghana's hand-painted movie posters on flour-sack canvas, made for mobile cinema: unconstrained imagination reinterpreting Hollywood with exaggeration and local horror into a painting style like no other.

Flour-sack canvas / Exaggerated violence and muscle / Free departure from the actual film / Hand-painted title lettering

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260

Chicha Poster

チチャ・ポスター / 1980s– / Style / Regional Graphics

Lima's cumbia shows produced a fluorescent poster style. Hand-drawn letters in day-glo pink and green on black shout loudly enough to be read from a passing night bus, and the look is now reclaimed as the aesthetic of Andean migrants to the city.

Fluorescent color on black / Heavy hand-drawn letters / Layered silkscreen / Maximum night visibility

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261

South Asian Truck Art

南アジアのトラックアート / 1940s– / Style / Signage and Display

Painted decoration covers every surface of the trucks of Pakistan and India. Floral phool patti, portraits of heroes and saints, and relief work in mirrors and chains turn a working vehicle into a rolling palace of pride.

All-over floral patterning / Panels of portraits and landscapes / Relief of mirrors, metal and chains / Calligraphy and slogans

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262

Fileteado Porteño

フィレテアード・ポルテーニョ / 1900s– / Technique / Signage and Display

Buenos Aires's decorative linework grew out of cart painting and shop signs. Swirling acanthus, ribbons, flowers and heavily shaded letters work as a single system in this urban brush craft, now inscribed by UNESCO.

Swirling acanthus and ribbons / Heavily shaded ornamental letters / Symmetrical framing / Traditional blue, gold and red

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263

Tingatinga

ティンガティンガ / 1968– / Style / Popular Painting

Edward Saidi Tingatinga began painting in Dar es Salaam with bicycle enamel. Glossy flat color, animals in bold outline and a surface with no empty ground were carried on as a cooperative's house style, and the school became East Africa's defining popular painting.

Enamel gloss / Bold-outlined animals / Flat color fields / Pattern filling the ground

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264

Papunya Tula

パプニャ・トゥラ / 1971– / Style / Regional Graphics

Elders of the Western Desert moved ceremonial sand designs onto acrylic and canvas. Fields of dots with concentric circles and journey lines paint Country as map-like knowledge, and the movement opened a place for Indigenous art within contemporary art.

Fields of dots / Concentric circles and journey lines / Map-like aerial composition / The color range of the land

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265

Soviet Picture Book

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

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266

Talnemokkol (De-squared Hangul)

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

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267

Shin-Hanga

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

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268

Jianzhi (Chinese Paper Cutting)

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

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269

Mingei

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

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270

Minhwa

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

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271

Đông Hồ Prints

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

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272

Nianhua

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

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273

Thangka

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

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274

Russian Icon

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

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275

Ethiopian Icon

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

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276

Tapa (Barkcloth)

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

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277

Kōwhaiwhai

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

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278

Kanga

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

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279

Swedish Grace

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

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280

Brussels Style

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

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281

Iranian Poster

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

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282

African Barbershop Sign

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

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283

Ebru

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

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284

Ex-Voto (Retablo)

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

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285

Pysanky

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

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286

Mola

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

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287

Adire

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

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288

Delftware

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

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Editorial policy

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

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