Geometric tattoos have truly moved to the forefront of tattooing culture in recent times. While symbolic, angular shapes have pretty much always existed in tattooing history, the 21^st century has seen a huge surge in innovative geometric tattoo designs.

The magic of these tattoos can be boiled down to the way they combine complexity with simplicity – they’re usually rendered in a minimalist style but involve often highly-intricate shapes.

Given geometry is a quite literally ancient science, geometric tattoos have a timeless relevance that most tattoo styles can’t match. However, geometric tattoos often use subject matter from the natural world –  geometric animals tattoos being the most popular source of inspiration. This is also the case with geometric flower tattoos, such as rose petals, say, can be given a fascinating twist by combining realistic curves with geometric-style precision lines, so the tattoo piece seems both everyday and abstract at the same time. Geometric mandala tattoos also have massive scope for stunning experimental works that would make any tattoo lover proud as punch. Geometric Wolf Tattoos are another popular design here in The Ink Factory. There’s also a whole world of portrait and popular culture tattoos that mix in geometric elements to dazzling effect.

Geometric tattoos, because of their sheer complexity, are a thrilling avenue to explore – whatever way your inspiration takes you. Tattoo artists love the vast potential for crafting geometric tattoo ideas with a client. When you factor in complimentary styles like Dotwork and Greywork, geometric tattoos allow for so many ways to add modern twists to classical shapes and concepts. Adding Dotwork gradients into the mix, for example, can throw open layers of added mystery to a geometric piece.

Lots of people prefer to go in a more fully abstract direction, and these tattoos can make for interesting, stark and spellbinding pieces. Cubes are great, powerful, simple shapes to work off. Cubes represent the Earth and stability and are a great basis for a simple meaningful wrist tattoo, for example.

But playing around with wilder shapes can produce amazing results. Polygon animal tattoos are becoming much sought after – this might involve combining an image of a wolf or an insect with minimalist angled shapes. Eh, wait, polywhat? While it sure does sound like a semi-rare Pokémon, ‘polygon’ is simply a catch-all term for a closed shape with defined sides (so your triangles, hexagons, octagons and all other ‘gons’ and ‘drons’ fall into this category). While we’re going down that road, geometric tattoos sometimes feature Tetrahedrons (three-sided triangles), Octahedrons (eight faces, twelves edges), Icosahedrons (thirty faces, twelve edges), and… actually, nah, I’ll stop.

Geometric tattoos are also of course one of the best styles of tattoos for personalisation. There are so many combinations of styles and ways extra shapes can be added on to create an evolving body canvas artwork. Limitless really!

While geometric tattoos vary so much in size and subject matter, perhaps the one idea that unifies them all is an attention to how the formulas of science interplay with the free flow of nature, and how they act in harmony. This type of tattoo is perhaps, more than anything, a way of processing and representing the natural laws that govern what can so often seem like a chaotic world.

Needless to say, you want your geometric tattoo done perfectly right. As in: Spot. On. What’s the point in coming up with a deadly tattoo idea if the lines aren’t rendered with the best quality ink and with absolute precision? That’s where The Ink Factory come in. Our tattoo artists are experts in delivering awesome geometric works that will stand the test of time, come in to one of our studios and start getting the creative juices flowing!