Maximalism design and Jeff Koons
Maximalism design is the opposite of minimalism. Minimalism style focuses on simplicity enhancing the power of emptiness in a sense whereas maximalism style involves bold typography and illustrations with bright colours and overall making the design lively by standing out as much as possible. Through these bold colours and patterns maximalism design creates a sense of chaos. This style is a great tool to make a statement and stand out to the audience, maximalism style can be seen used in advertisement as it aims to catch the attention of the public.
This is an example of maximalism in graphic design, this is a promotional Nike poster that showcases the brand through colourful and cartoon like illustrations. The design creates an energetic atmosphere through the bright visuals which is effective for grabbing attention. Maximalism design doesn’t follow specific rules like minimalism would, there is much more freedom especially for the use of colour as we can see in this example there are multiple colours demonstrated in this design.
This is another example of maximalism in graphic design, unlike the previous example this design is more thoughtful about colour choices as it only uses three colours that work well together. However, it is still a typically chaotic maximalism design through the same typography being spread across the whole page multiple times blending with a single large text in the background making the overall design busy.
This is an example of Jeff Koons who is an American artist and is well known for his artistic sculptures that can identify as maximalism design through the unusual creations he came up with. This is one of his well-known Balloon dog sculptures that can be found in different colours, Jeff Koons applied creativity and bizarre design idea turning a basic balloon dog into a colourful sculpture. He has also created the same sculptures based of other species such as snakes.
This another example of Jeff Koons work, similar to the previous example he bases his design idea from a balloon whereas in this example he transforms a group of three colourful balloons into a sculpture. Through this design he portrays simplicity but at the same time something unusual.
Here are some of my attempts at recreating maximalism design, I’ve not found this easy as I don’t particularly like this style personally as I’ve never created designs based on this style before, however I’ve used the knowledge I’ve gained from the research to recreate my own designs inspired by this style.
This design is based on a champions league fixture between two Milan teams, as you could see I’ve used a different typography across the design all in different colour portraying the main components of maximalism design portraying the messy, chaotic feel to the design. I’ve always randomly placed the champions league star across the design to add to the chaotic feel.
For this design I tried to approach it the same way however like I said previously I struggle with recreating the maximalism style as my preference leans towards neater designs that follow specific design rules such as minimalism. I focused on creating a nice composition for this design mixed with a chaotic, busy feel to it.
