With Yinka Ilori, what you see is what you get. The designer, born in London in 1987, regularly says that he wants to draw on his Nigerian roots to “bring together communities” and “evoke a sense of joy and optimism”. Which he then does, with a palette of colour clashes that shouldn’t work but do – hot pink-orange-maroon-green, for example, or mauve-red-yellow-turquoise – plus childlike geometries of circles and oblongs, and a penchant for improvisation. The results can be seen in a basketball court in Canary Wharf, or on cushion covers, or on objects and installations for brands such as Pepsi, Meta and LG, or on morale-boosting billboards put up during the pandemic.
