A visual style reference
Know the style when you see it.
Design Style Book is a visual reference for the world's design styles — what defines each one, when and where it appeared, the real work that shows it best, and the words to describe it. Explore by discipline.
Design of the day
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1950s–1970sSwiss Style
The mid-century gospel of objective design — mathematical grids, flush-left ragged-right sans-serif type (Helvetica, Akzidenz-Grotesk), generous white space, and photography in place of illustration.
Graphic Design · 1950s–1970s
Swiss Style
The mid-century gospel of objective design — mathematical grids, flush-left ragged-right sans-serif type (Helvetica, Akzidenz-Grotesk), generous white space, and photography in place of illustration.
Architecture
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1740s–1900sGothic Revival
A 19th-century revival of medieval Gothic forms — pointed arches, soaring verticality, and rich ornament — applied to churches, universities, and civic landmarks.
1830s–1900sBeaux-Arts
A grand, symmetrical classicism taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris — monumental facades layered with sculpture, columns, and richly worked stone.
1890–1910Art Nouveau
A short-lived but radical style of flowing, organic line — whiplash curves, plant and vine motifs, and ornament fused with structure.
Graphic Design
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1840s–1900Victorian Graphic Design
A dense, polychrome commercial idiom built on chromolithography, crowding trade cards and advertisements with ornate borders, layered display faces, and saturated color.
1860s–1900sArts & Crafts Book Design
A reform movement in book design led by William Morris's Kelmscott Press, reviving dense medieval page architecture with hand-drawn borders, woodcut ornament, and unified type-and-image craft.
1890–1910Art Nouveau (Graphic)
The poster and print language of the Belle Époque — sinuous 'whiplash' line, idealized women wreathed in flowers and flowing hair, ornamental borders, and hand-drawn lettering fused into a single decorative whole.
Typography
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1460s–1490sHumanist (Venetian) Serif
The earliest roman printing types, cut in Renaissance Italy to imitate the humanist scribal hand. Warm, sturdy, and unmistakably pen-formed, with a strongly slanted stress and a sloping crossbar on the lowercase e.
1490s–1700sGaralde (Old-style)
The classic old-style serif — humanist roots refined by Aldus Manutius and the French punchcutters, with moderate stroke contrast, bracketed serifs, and an inclined stress that recalls the broad-nib pen.
1690s–1790sTransitional Serif
The bridge between the pen-formed old-styles and the rationalist Didones. Contrast sharpens and the axis swings toward vertical, yielding crisper, more even letterforms still warmed by bracketed serifs.
Industrial Design
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1850s–1900sThonet Bentwood
Mass-produced furniture of steam-bent solid beech pioneered by Michael Thonet — light, cheap, knock-down chairs like the iconic No. 14 that put industrial production at the service of an elegant, minimal line.
1790s–1860sShaker Furniture
Furniture made by the Shaker religious communities — spare ladder-back chairs, peg-rail storage, and built-ins whose honesty, light weight, and total absence of ornament made utility itself the only decoration.
1860s–1910sArts and Crafts Product
British furniture and household objects reviving honest handcraft as a moral answer to shoddy industrial goods — vernacular forms, visible joinery, and the truthful use of oak, rush, and hammered metal led by William Morris.
Interior Design
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1600s–1750Baroque Interior
The theatrical court interior of absolutist Europe — grand enfilades dripping with gilt, marble, ceiling frescoes and mirror, staged for awe.
1715–1770Rococo Interior
The intimate, asymmetric French salon of the Louis XV era — pastel boiserie, gilded scrollwork, shellwork curves and mirrored grace.
1760s–1830Neoclassical Interior
The ordered, antiquity-inspired interior that swept away Rococo — symmetrical rooms with classical orders, urns, swags and restrained color.