# Pop Art effect generator

Your photo printed in flat inks with true Ben-Day dots and a heavy black plate off register, alone on a bright field or repeated in a grid. The photo stays on your device.

Open the generator: https://morph.ogeny.app/pop-art/

## Design choices

- **Repetition & rhythm** (`space.repetition`): Repeated units create a visual cadence. Set by “Repetition & rhythm”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/repetition-and-rhythm/
- **Single focal point** (`space.single-focal`): One unmistakable point of entry. “Repetition & rhythm”: One icon. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/single-focal-point/
- **Modular grid** (`layout.modular-grid`): Fields defined by rows and columns; every element snaps to modules. “Repetition & rhythm”: Two by two. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/modular-grid/
- **Isolated object** (`layout.isolated-object`): A single object or figure isolated on a plain ground. Set by “Isolated object”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/isolated-object/
- **Halftone & Ben-Day dots** (`surface.halftone`): Dot screens made visible. Set by “Halftone & Ben-Day dots”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/halftone-and-ben-day-dots/
- **Flat** (`surface.flat`): No simulated depth or texture. “Halftone & Ben-Day dots”: None. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat/
- **Misregistration & overprint** (`surface.misregistration`): Inks slightly out of register; transparent overprints. Set by “Misregistration & overprint”. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/misregistration-and-overprint/
- **Treated photography** (`image.treated-photo`): Duotone, high-contrast or posterised photographs. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/treated-photography/
- **Screen printing** (`medium.screenprint`): Flat stencil-printed inks, often opaque or fluorescent. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/screen-printing/
- **Flat fields** (`color.flat-fields`): Unmodulated areas of colour. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-fields/
- **Found & vernacular imagery** (`image.found-vernacular`): Clip art, stock, screenshots, appropriated ephemera. Always. https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/found-and-vernacular-imagery/

## How it works

- The photo is cut into three or four flat inks from nested tone thresholds, stacked light to dark, with the darkest as a black plate printed slightly off register.
- One tone band is a tint of true Ben-Day dots: one size, one spacing, one ink, on a 45° lattice, never a halftone whose dots grow with the tone.
- A clear subject is cut out and set on a plain field as an icon; the serial grid repeats the same print with a new colourway in every cell.

It never does:

- No two-by-two grid of a face in four colourways as the default, and no copies of famous prints: the default is one everyday object as an icon.
- No gradients, no soft shadows and no photographic texture: only flat inks, dots and black.

## Controls

- `repeat` Repetition & rhythm (single | strip | two | three; default single): The same print repeated in a serial grid, with a new colourway in every cell. Three by three: Measured on the opening picture: vertical alignment lines 34 with “Three by three”, 30 with “One icon” and 29 with “Strip of three”.
- `isolate` Isolated object (default true): Cut the subject out and set it on a plain field, when the photo has a clear one.
- `dots` Halftone & Ben-Day dots (tones | field | none; default tones): Where the tint of dots goes.
- `dotSize` Dot size (7–30, default 13): The spacing of the Ben-Day dots; every dot is the same size.
- `black` Black plate (0.08–0.5, default 0.24): How much of the subject prints in black.
- `outline` Contours (0–1, default 0.6): The weight of the black outlines.
- `register` Misregistration & overprint (0–1, default 0.35): How far the black plate lands from the colours.
- `detail` Detail (0–1, default 0.5): How finely the tones are cut.

## About Pop Art Graphics

Pop Art took the pictures of post-war consumer culture (comics, packaging, publicity photographs, advertising) and made them its subject and its method. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, images were borrowed, enlarged, flattened and repeated. Colour was bright and unmodulated, and the marks of the printing process, from Ben-Day dots to off-register screens, were left in plain sight as signs of mass production.

This generator pulls your photo through that print shop. Its tones are traced into three or four flat inks stacked light to dark, one tone band becomes a tint of Ben-Day dots (one size, one spacing, one ink, unlike a halftone, whose dots grow with the tone), and the darkest band is a black plate with heavy contours, printed a little off register. A clear subject is cut out and set on a plain field as an icon, or the same print repeats in a grid with a new colourway in every cell.

Your photo is read only in your browser and is never uploaded. The SVG holds only shapes, ready to scale to any size.

Pop Art Graphics in Stylogeny (1955–1975): https://stylogeny.com/styles/pop-art/

## Recipe

```json
{
  "tool": "pop-art",
  "v": 1,
  "seed": 1,
  "format": "portrait",
  "params": {
    "repeat": "single",
    "isolate": true,
    "dots": "tones",
    "dotSize": 13,
    "black": 0.24,
    "outline": 0.6,
    "register": 0.35,
    "detail": 0.5
  },
  "palette": "pop-art"
}
```