Are You Afraid of Being A Square?
Apple has just satisfied our long term craving for a taco emoji in their recent iOS update. But the question we’re asking is where’s the bacon?
Experiencing worldwide success as a designer in the first few years of your career is quite rare. And yet Yves Saint Laurent had already become one of the world’s top fashion designers before he turned 30.
In 1965, he designed one of the most iconic dresses in the fashion industry that catapulted his career and made him famous worldwide. It was even featured on the cover of Vogue magazine that year. The dress was inspired by the simple geometric designs of a relatively unknown painter from Holland who died 21 years earlier. Yves copied the artwork that was meant to hang on the walls of museums, and used them to create a dress that became the Gangnam Style sensation of the day. Piet Mondrian was obscure no more.
Mondrian was a Dutch artist born 143 years ago. In his twenties, he started out as a typical painter recreating landscapes and pastoral scenes like most other artists at that time. He hadn’t produced any new art movements yet. After moving to Paris, he was introduced to abstract art by Picasso and Georges Braque. Unable to write emails in 1914, he wrote a letter to a friend in which he outlined his growing passion for using straightlines:
I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. I want to come as close as possible to the truth…
I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art.
That’s using a lot of words to say you like straight lines.
From then on, Mondrian only experimented with lines and primary colors. He played with different line thicknesses and included large white spaces, or shall we say, negative spaces? Instead of using traditional canvas and painting directly, Mondrian used paper cutouts of primary colours and pasted them all over his apartment walls in changing arrangements.
Most creatives are usually forced to work within project deadlines due in a matter of days or weeks while Mondrian would start some paintings that would not be finished until years later.
What makes Mondrian’s art incredibly distinctive is its ultra simplicity: black, white, and the use of only primary colours. The shapes are rectangular or square blocks. Although we can appreciate the beauty in the intricate details of the ceiling in the Sistine chapel, Belgian lace, or a Fabergé egg. What becomes timeless is simplicity.
After the eye-catching dress made its appearance, an explosion of Mondrian inspired design flooded the market. Nike came out with their Mondrian sneakers, L’Oreal used it in their packaging and the café in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art even baked cakes showcasing the iconic design. Now there are more products than ever featuring the Mondrian design from iPhone cases to men’s ties. It’s not unusual to see Mondrian inspired designs come and go in waves. Just last summer, it was shown in Katy Perry’s hit song “This Is How We Do” music video.
Though he undoubtedly considered himself a painter, and not a graphic designer, Mondrian’s exploration into simplicity and boldness remains an inspiration today.
Message us on our WeChat account if you’re into squares as much as we are! Having trouble finding Mondrian inspired products? No problem, we’ll send you our favourite link to stock up so you can be covered head to toe in “Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow”.
Don’t miss out on next week’s post! We’re covering 20 Mac hacks to supercharge your workflow with shortcuts and tricks you never knew your Mac had.
