The Mondrian Effect

Borrow from the famous painter and explore the endlessly interesting world of Mondrian.

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch modernist painter whose work in the first half of the 20th century went on to have a huge influence, way beyond the art world. There’s even a word, Mondrianesque, and though it’s not used much, it refers to the striking, simple and memorable style of his abstract and geometric compositions. Everyone knows them.

Primary-coloured squares and rectangles set into a grid of black lines on a white background. They’ve become what people in the creative world like to call iconic, or even worse, totemic, which means that they get appropriated for all kinds of uses. From design to fashion, Mondrian’s seemingly simple and endlessly modern style has been repurposed countless times, from Yves Saint Lauren’s fashion collection of 1965, to a Nike trainer design of 2017.