The Mythograph: A Brief Introduction

Once I coined the term “Illusograph” for a certain type of artwork I do, it was easy to coin another phrase for another type of artwork I do – the fictive advertisements, logos, brands, anything commercial looking really. I call them Mythographs – which, of course, coined some other words as well – for example, Mythographic and Mythography. What follows is my somewhat formal reasoning for the new art term Mythograph. Please visit my Visual Design page for dozens of more examples of Mythographs and some Illusographs as well. What follows is my somewhat formal reasoning for the use and existence of the Mythograph.

High On A Hill & Completely Fictive

A Mythograph is a constructed artifact that presents itself as real, functional, and believable—while quietly suggesting that it may not be. It exists in the narrow space between fact and fiction, where design, language, and cultural familiarity combine to create something that feels authoritative, yet invites doubt.

Unlike overt parody or satire, the Mythograph does not announce its intentions. It adopts the visual and verbal conventions of industry, commerce, and information—labels, diagrams, instructions, claims—and uses them with precision. Typography, layout, naming, and tone all work together to establish credibility. At first glance, nothing appears out of place. Only upon closer inspection does a subtle shift occur.

The Mythograph reveals itself not through exaggeration, but through near-perfect imitation. A detail slightly misaligned with reality, a claim just beyond plausibility, a name that carries a quiet irony—these are its signals. The viewer is not told what to think, but is instead invited to recognize the possibility that what they are seeing belongs to a world adjacent to their own.

Mythographs are produced through Advention, the act of invention guided by the logic of the familiar. Each piece functions as a fragment of a larger, implied system—a product line, a company, a process—that appears coherent, even if it does not exist. In this way, the Mythograph operates less as a joke and more as a plausible fiction: a designed object that behaves like truth, while remaining just outside it.

It is not concerned with deception, but with perception—how easily belief can be constructed, and how subtly it can be unsettled.