Five sites, one press.
Van Riel Online Services makes five sites that take things apart into the choices they are made of: graphic styles, photographic looks, quotations and the way a brand writes, each traced to its source, and styles grown back from code. Together they printed this poster.
One poster, five plates.
We gave the family one brief and let each site print what it knows, in its own ink. Pulled apart, the plates show who made what, and what the other four take from Stylogeny.
A poster for one quotation by Dostoevsky, set in type with a portrait photograph and a geometric pattern. Striking and modern, printed in spot colours that overprint; crisp, exact and calm.
Plate 1 of 5 · the style
Stylogeny
An atlas of graphic-design styles
Given the brief, it proposed a few directions. One led to Milanese Industrial Modernism, the school of Olivetti and Pirelli: transparent planes of colour on white, a grotesque in lower case, room to breathe. The red plane is that style’s signature.
- Dynamic asymmetry
- Generous white space
- Grotesque & neo-grotesque
- Limited spot colours
- Misregistration & overprint
- Calm & contemplative
- 377
- styles
- 150
- design choices in 10 facets
- 13
- world regions
Plate 2 of 5 · the pattern
Morphogeny
A lab of style generators
It looked for the generator whose style is closest to Milanese modernism by their choices, and found Concrete: 69% alike, 14 choices shared. One module, a split disc, turned in even steps by a rule. The second ink prints as a 42% screen.
69%alike by their design choices: Milanese modernism and the Concrete generator
concrete · seed 7 · split disc · rotate · 5 a row
Takes from Stylogeny: its styles, choices and palettes
- 8
- generators
- 3
- export formats: SVG, PNG and video
- 0
- image models used
Plate 3 of 5 · the portrait
Lumogeny
An atlas of photographic styles
The photograph is Konstantin Shapiro’s portrait of Dostoevsky, 1879. Lumogeny’s entry for studio portraits of that time says where the light stood: daylight from a skylight and side windows, softened with blinds, and a few seconds on wet collodion at about ISO 1.
ISO 1wet collodion under a skylight: the sitter held still for seconds
carte-de-visite studio portraits · 1854 to 1900 · one soft light
Takes from Stylogeny: its engine, with light, lens, pose and process as its choices
- 43
- photographic styles
- 295
- photographic choices in 15 groups
- 99
- photographs from open museum collections
Plate 4 of 5 · the words
Quotogeny
An atlas of quotations
“Beauty will save the world.” Quotogeny found it word for word in The Idiot (1869), part 3, chapter 5. Genuine, with a catch: it is Ippolit who says it, mocking the prince, not Dostoevsky in his own voice.
- Reported
- Left open
- Ironic
- Shifts out of context
- One line
- Prophecy & warning
verdict: genuine · speaker: Ippolit Terentyev · tr. Constance Garnett, 1913
Of the 271 quotes traced so far, 95 are not theirs in the form people share them.
Takes from Stylogeny: its method: a quote is classified by the choices it is made of
- 271
- quotes traced so far
- 34
- people they are credited to
- 95
- not theirs as shared
Plate 5 of 5 · the voice
Glossogeny
A brand’s way of writing
It holds how the family writes, as a voice set on fixed choices, and wrote the poster’s colophon in it. Its checker marked five slips in a first draft (hype, a vague phrase, a long dash, an American spelling) and passed the printed text: score 83, then 100.
- Address: you, where a reader acts
- Hype: 1 of 5
- Sentences: 8 to 20 words
- Exclamations: none
- Facts: sourced
- Spelling: British
profile: ogeny · draft · 6 principles · 15 terms · 3 kinds of text
Takes from Stylogeny: its method: a voice is described by the choices it is made of
- 25
- voice choices in 6 facets
- 3
- brand voices, the family’s own among them
- 4
- languages it checks: English, Dutch, German and French
Ask for an invitationIn use with brands, by invitation.
In register.
Five plates, one sheet. They line up because all five sites describe things the same way: by the choices they are made of, each traced to a source.
Fig. 1. “Beauty will save the world”, printed by Stylogeny (the style), Morphogeny (the pattern), Lumogeny (the portrait), Quotogeny (the words) and Glossogeny (the voice of its colophon). Portrait by Konstantin Shapiro, 1879, public domain.
What all five share
The plates register because the sites were built on the same four habits, each in its own form.
| Habit | Stylogeny | Morphogeny | Lumogeny | Quotogeny | Glossogeny |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Described by its choices | 150 design choices | one named choice per control | 295 photographic choices | eight facets, theme to use | 25 voice choices |
| Traced to a source | works and sources per style | a recipe that redraws it | 99 credited photographs | the words in the full text | each term with its page |
| Says what a machine made | AI images labelled | code, no image model | renders and AI images marked | says if an editor checked | AI additions stay drafts |
| Readable by agents | llms.txt | llms.txt | llms.txt | llms.txt | an MCP server |
Van Riel Online Services
The press is our service.
The five sites are the plates. We run the press that puts them to work for you: agents take your brief, ask each site for its part and check the result by the same rules, until a person signs it off. The poster above was made this way.
Put the press to workinfo@vanriel.eu
- 01BriefYou say what is needed, in plain words. The brief and every decision after it are kept as files the agents work from.
- 02PlatesAgents ask each site for its part: Stylogeny the style, Morphogeny the pattern, Lumogeny the light, Quotogeny the quotes, Glossogeny the voice.
- 03ProofCritics that never see how the work was made check it: the sources, the voice, what a machine made.
- 04RegisterHard checks pass or fail; nothing is averaged away. After three failed tries on one point, a person decides.
- 05Sign-offNothing goes out until a person has approved it.