Michiel Schuurman’s giant illustrations meditate on the tiniest of details

Combining a meticulous obsession with minutiae, acid hues and bold repetition, Dutch designer Michiel Schuurman creates mandala-like illustrations that boggle the mind. His penchant for experimental typography and trippy visuals has won him fans at Wired US and Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant and since 2012 he’s created designs for Dutch wax textile company Vlisco, which makes graphic prints popular across Africa and used extensively by artist Yinka Shonibare. “A lot of African patterns feature everyday objects like phones and such but I like to work in a much more abstract way,” explains Michiel. “I’m not afraid to use ornamentation in my work. I’m not a conceptual designer, the concept is always visual. I’m interested in maximising.”

Vlisco has been an excellent playground for Michiel to riff on tiny details – designers are allowed at least a month for each design and he’s been able to push the incredibly complex printing process to the edge of its technical limitations. For a recent pop art-themed collection, Michiel nodded to a Roy Lichtenstein painting that features the artists’ trademark raster points enlarged with a magnifying glass, replicating the effect with perfectly rendered marbles. “Roy didn’t make the magnification very realistic so that formed a nice starting point for the fabric,” he adds. For another he spent over a year working with Vlisco’s technicians to develop a pattern inspired by light-emitting neons, a huge feat considering the design totally disrupts traditional light-on-dark printing conventions. “I fantasise about what people in Africa can do with it in 3D.”

Michiel’s personal work also shows masterful control of pattern and fixation on the little things. Recent projects include a poster that depicts Kim Gordon’s exact guitar pedal set-up (informed by a fan photograph) and a huge installation featuring a interweaving metallic arrow pattern stretching across 40 square-metres. Signed to Big Active since February, he’s got several exhibition design, mural and wallpaper projects in the pipeline so watch this intricately rendered space.