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.
TryBauhausa premium recruiting websitea trustworthy finance app
Interpreted asLuxuryWeb / UIRecruiting / people
298
企業モダニズム / 1950s–1970s / Style / Contemporary Branding
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The golden age of corporate identity established by Rand, Chermayeff and their peers: geometric marks, gridded standards manuals and disciplined application speaking for corporations in modernism's abstract language.
Abstract geometric marks / Standards manuals / Gridded application discipline / Single-color strength
42
ベントーグリッド / 2020s / Layout / Information Design
Why it is closeWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTrustTechnique
Divides different kinds of information into independent boxes, giving the whole picture at a glance.
Cards large and small / Aligned gutters / One-screen summary / Modules
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スイス・スタイル / 1950s– / Style / Functionalism
Why it is closeWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTrustCalm
Puts order front and center and makes the information itself the protagonist.
Strict grid / Sans-serif type / Asymmetry / Objective photography
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ミニマリズム / 1960s– / Style / Functionalism
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Removes elements to maximize the meaning and tension of what remains.
Vast white space / Few elements / Quiet color / Precise spacing
230
案内用ピクトグラム / 1964– / Style / Information Design
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Unified symbol systems that name facilities and actions without language. Tokyo 1964 systematized sport and wayfinding symbols; the AIGA/DOT transportation set became the public-domain world standard.
Geometrized human figures / Uniform stroke weight / Consistency as a system / Independence from language
59
アイソタイプ / 1920s–1940s / Layout / Information Design
Why it is closeWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTrustTechnique
Translates quantity into repeated same-size symbols, making comparison readable before language.
Unified pictograms / Repetition of signs / Axes of comparison / Restricted color
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無印良品 / 1980– / Style / Contemporary Branding
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A way of letting the raw colour of a material stand as the finish of an industrial product. Unbleached paper, uncoloured plastic and unstained wood are the outside of the thing, and the product name moves off that surface onto a hang tag.
Unbleached paper and uncoloured translucent plastic standing as the colour of the packaging / No name or mark printed on the product itself, the name living only on the hang tag and the price label / Several lines of small type on the hang tag explaining the material and how it was made / Advertising that keeps the product small, with landscape or empty space filling most of the frame
26
グラスモーフィズム / 2020s / Style / UI Expression
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Shows depth and hierarchy through translucent layers, floating information lightly.
Background blur / Translucency / Thin white borders / Color bleed
229
スキーマティック路線図 / 1933– / Layout / Information Design
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Discards geographic accuracy for horizontal, vertical and 45-degree lines with evenly spaced stations. Beck's 1933 London Underground diagram established it as the common language of transit maps worldwide.
Lines limited to 45 degrees / Evenly spaced stations / Color-coded lines / Independence from geography
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コーポレート・メンフィス / mid-2010s– / Style / Illustration Styles
Why it is closeWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTrustIntimacy
Explains digital services as safe and friendly through simplified figures, geometry and soft color.
Exaggerated body ratios / Flat color / Geometric plants / White grounds
403
ブラシドメタル / 1999–2007 / Style / Apple UI
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The hairline-metal windows of iTunes and Safari: a skeuomorphic branch that speaks an app's purpose through material, bringing pro-gear trust to the desktop.
Hairline metal surfaces / Rivet-like details / Equipment metaphors / Gray tonal ranges
495
スクロールテリング / 2012– / Layout / Reading on the Web
Why it is closeWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTrustTechnique
A web page form in which the reader's scroll position is the clock of the story, with graphics, maps and video changing as the page moves and reversing when the reader scrolls back. Visualization researchers treat it as the web equivalent of long form journalism and describe its structure as either linear or elastic, the elastic kind letting a reader dive deeper on demand. News outlets including the New York Times, the BBC and The Economist built the form out.
A graphic that holds still on screen while a single narrow column of text passes over it / Changes made by opacity and by moving a map, so that scrolling back undoes them in the same order / Photography, video and data visualization sharing one article / A path that is either straight through or branches into an optional deeper detour and returns
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紙幣のギヨシェ / 18th century– / Technique / Public Design
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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
51
ウィーン分離派 / 1897–1910s / Style / Fin de Siècle Art
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Tightens organic ornament with geometry and flat composition, erasing the border between art and design.
Square skeletons / Repeating pattern / Gold and black / Flattened figures and plants
463
ルネサンス / 14th–16th century / Style / Historical Styles
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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
486
ネクストステップ・インターフェース / 1988–1997 / Style / Platform Screen Languages
Why it is closeLuxuryWeb / UITechniqueCalm
The screen language NeXT laid down in its 1993 interface guidelines. The document states the goal outright: a color scheme based on black, white, and gray, and a simple appearance that uses shading for a three dimensional effect. The main menu stands as a vertical column at the upper left, and docked application icons run down the right edge.
A menu standing as a vertical column at the upper left, submenus attaching to its right / Square application icons docked in a vertical strip along the right edge of the screen / Thick bevels carved entirely from gray values, with no hue anywhere in them / A black title bar on the window taking keystrokes, dark gray on a window that is merely frontmost
6
モダニズム / 1920s–1970s / Style / Functionalism
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Replaces ornament with reasoned form and aims at universality. The particular answers stand as their own entries, and Bauhaus, Swiss, Minimalism and Streamline Moderne are all separate solutions arrived at from this one stance.
Simplification / Clear hierarchy / Function first / Universal forms
368
ペルシャ庭園 / 6th century BC– / Style / Garden Styles
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The origin of the chahar bagh, quartered by crossing water channels: a walled paradise of water and shade built against the desert. It gave the word paradise its meaning and the garden its archetype from Islam to the Mughals.
Fourfold division by water / Axial basins and channels / The walled paradise / Shaded avenues
457
ノヴェチェント・イタリアーノ / 1922–1943 / Style / Painting Techniques
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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
492
クロスメディアバー / 2003–2013 / Layout / Platform Screen Languages
Why it is closeLuxuryWeb / UITechniqueCalm
Sony's trademarked interface language for its consoles and televisions. As the official manual puts it, the horizontal row shows system features in categories and the vertical column shows the items available under each category, and the single point where the two cross lights up gold to say where you are. Everything else stays pale blue on a dark field.
A horizontal row and a vertical column cross slightly left of center, and only the item at that crossing glows gold / Text labels appear for the selected item alone; the rest of the rows are icons only / The ground is one near black navy and the icons are thin pale blue outlines rather than filled shapes / Left and right move through categories, up and down through items, but it is the rows that slide while the crossing stays put
113
ムガル細密画 / 16th–19th centuries / Style / Persian and Indian Painting
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Condenses court life, history, nature and story into a small plane through precise brushwork, gold, pigments, ornamental borders and multiple viewpoints.
Precise brushwork / Gold and opaque watercolor / Ornamental borders / Multiple viewpoints
549
パワー・ドレッシング / 1970s–1980s / Style / Fashion History
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Dress that makes workplace authority visible. In the 1980s the sharply tailored, big-shouldered suit became a sign of upward mobility for women and men, enlarging and hardening the silhouette while also carrying the pressure to conform.
Padded jackets widening the shoulders / A fitted waist and inverted-triangle silhouette / Dark worsted cloth and pinstripes / Coordinated suit, shirt, tie or pumps
274
ロシア・イコン / 10th–17th century / continuing / Style / Icon Painting
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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
498
エクスプローラブル・エクスプラネーション / 2011– / Technique / Reading on the Web
Why it is closeWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTrustTechnique
The name Bret Victor gave, in a March 2011 essay of the same title, to writing that embeds a running model inside the prose. Numbers in the body text carry a dotted underline and can be dragged, and pulling one rewrites the rest of the sentence and the figure beside it at the same time. He described the result as a written argument whose assertions are backed by explorable computational models.
Numbers inside the running text sit on a dotted underline and turn blue when touched / Dragging one of those numbers rewrites the following sentence and the neighboring figure at once / Figures are not quarantined in a separate sandbox but sit continuous with the paragraphs around them / Untouched, the piece still reads, because the default values already make the figures meaningful
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クーフィー体 / 8th century onward / Style / Calligraphic Traditions
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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
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パッラーディオ主義 / 1550s– / 17th–18th century revival / Style / Historical Styles
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Palladio distilled proportion, the temple front and strict symmetry from Roman antiquity into a formula for the villa. His Four Books carried it to Britain and America, where it became the archetypal correct face of public architecture.
Temple-front portico / Strict symmetry / Plans from proportion / Central dome
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ホワイトキューブ / 1930s– / Style / Exhibition Design
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White walls, even light and an unadorned room, so that only the work stands up. MoMA made it standard, and though O'Doherty's criticism exposed it as an institution disguised as neutrality, it remains the default for showing contemporary art.
White walls / Even lighting / The isolated artwork / Context erased
330
家紋 / Heian period– / Style / Symbol Systems
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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
360
枯山水 / Muromachi period– / Style / Garden Styles
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A Japanese garden that uses no water at all, representing waterscape and cosmos through raked sand and set stones. The fifteen rocks of Ryōan-ji compose by subtraction, and minimalists worldwide still cite them as the archetype for designing emptiness.
Water implied in raked gravel / Asymmetric stone groupings / A fixed viewpoint from the veranda / Radical subtraction
458
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イタリア合理主義 / 1926–1943 / Style / Modern Architecture
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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
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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
464
新古典主義 / 1760s–1830s / Style / Historical Styles
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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
478
文人画 / 11th century– / Style / East Asian Painting
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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
117
リキッドガラス / 2025– / Style / Apple UI
Why it is closeLuxuryWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTechnique
Unifies the floating control and navigation layer as a fluid glass material that refracts and adapts to the content beneath.
Dynamic refraction / Concentric corner radii / Floating control layers / Reflected background color
401
エアロ / 2006–2012 / Style / Microsoft UI
Why it is closeLuxuryWeb / UIRecruiting / peopleTechnique
The translucent glass UI of Vista and 7: frosted window frames, live thumbnails and GPU-composited depth making 'through glass' the OS's standard vocabulary.
Frosted frames / Reflections and highlights / Live thumbnails / GPU-composited depth
2
バウハウス / 1919–1933 / Style / Functionalism
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Makes function and play coexist through the circle, triangle and square.
Elementary shapes / Primary colors / Functional beauty / Visible structure
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イスラム幾何学文様 / 8th century– / Technique / Ornament
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Divides, repeats and combines circles, squares, polygons and stars, building infinite extension and order on a finite plane.
Compass construction / Star forms / Repeating units / Interlacing lines
222
曲木家具（トーネット） / 1859– / Technique / Furniture and Interiors
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Thonet's chair No. 14 reduced steam-bent beech to a handful of parts, the first industrial furniture to ship knocked-down and be made in quantity. Rational components and an elegant curve arrived together, which is why it is called the origin of modern design.
Steam-bent curves / Reduction to few parts / Knock-down shipping / Lightness and mass production
332
篆刻 / Qin dynasty– / Technique / Calligraphic Traditions
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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
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琳派 / early 17th century– / Style / East Asian Painting
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Gold and silver grounds, mineral pigment, simplified nature, empty space, repetition and tarashikomi run across its work, pulling painting, craft and calligraphy into one bold, flat composition.
Gold and silver grounds / Boldly abbreviated nature / Repetition and emptiness / Tarashikomi pooling
331
西洋紋章学 / 12th century– / Style / Symbol Systems
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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
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社会主義リアリズム / 1932–1988 / Style / Printmaking and Social Movements
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A realism codified as the state's official style in 1934, depicting workers and leaders in idealised form. It rejected avant-garde experiment in favour of imagery legible to everyone, repeating the regime's narrative through low viewpoints, forward-striding crowds and the light of a bright future. Important as a rare case in which a state decreed a style.
Heroicised figures of workers / Monumental compositions seen from below / Healthy skin and bright light / Crowds striding forward
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ルミニズム / 1850–1875 / Style / American Modern Art
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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
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有機的建築 / 1900s– / Style / Modern Architecture
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Refuses to treat building, furniture, material, terrain and light separately, designing them as one continuum that includes the place and the life lived in it.
Integration with terrain / Horizontals / Natural materials / Inside-outside continuity
135
ローマン・キャピタル / 1st–2nd century / Style / Type Classification
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Capitals cut for stone, with geometric proportions and serifs, became the skeleton of the Latin alphabet and the archetype of authority for two thousand years.
Geometric proportions / Chiseled serifs / All-capital setting / Monumental letterspacing
213
ボザール様式 / 1830s–1920s / Style / Historical Styles
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The academic synthesis of the classical taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Grand axes, sculptural ornament and a hierarchy of formality were laid over the new technologies of iron and glass, giving the modern city its public face in stations, museums and banks.
Grand axes and staircases / Synthesized classical orders / Sculptural ornament / Stone over iron structure
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スウェディッシュ・グレース / 1917–1930 / Style / Scandinavian Design
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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
335
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ボタニカルアート / 16th century– / Style / Natural History Illustration
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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
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