LONDON.- Monumental paintings by internationally acclaimed artist Harland Miller — including brand new works specially created for the exhibition — have been unveiled in a new show at the Design Museum in London.

Miller is an artist and writer recognised as one of the leading figures in international contemporary art. Works from his ongoing Letter Painting series are presented in this free exhibition across two locations within the museum.

Visitors can explore how Miller harnesses the principles of graphic design, deploying bright, saturated colour palettes and a wide range of typefaces designed by the artist himself.

Thirteen largescale paintings can be seen in the museum’s Helene and Johannes Huth Gallery, while fifteen works on paper from the same series are shown on the mezzanine level in the heart of the Design Museum’s Grade II* listed building.

Miller has produced nine new works for this exhibition. These are shown alongside earlier paintings in the series, such as Far Out (2022), Miller's first diptych in the series, where huge letters rendered in rich, saturated colours vie for attention across the two canvases, and XXX (2025), which repeats a letter which is significant to the artist in its form and design, but also due to its connotations and connections to punk culture and X-rated cinema.

The huge scale of Miller's Huth Gallery canvases reflects Miller’s time living in Los Angeles, driving past monolithic billboards on the highway.

These are then contrasted with the selection of smaller works on paper from the same series. These pieces allow close-range insight into the structural composition that informs Miller’s large-scale, finished paintings. The Letter Paintings series demonstrates the synergy between art and design in Miller's work that makes the Design Museum a fitting location for a series based on the language of graphic design.

It was while studying for an A-Level in the History of Lettering that Miller discovered the allure of medieval manuscripts, in which monks laboured to produce highly decorative letters as chapter-headings. This painstaking process was the source of inspiration for the Letter Painting series and the related works on paper. It is a series and a subject that Miller returns to time and again, synthesising modern Pop Art sensibility with centuries-old manuscripts illumination, seamlessly melding the sacred with the everyday.

The exhibition is co-curated by Miller and the Design Museum’s Director and CEO Tim Marlow.

Tim Marlow, Director and CEO of the Design Museum, said: “I’m delighted that we are staging an exhibition of Harland Miller’s paintings and drawings at the Design Museum. They reinterpret graphic icons and are painterly icons in themselves. With his own distinctive playfulness, invention and wit, much of his work is an exploration of graphic design through painting and of painting through graphic design. He has shown in numerous art galleries and museums around the world but never in one devoted to design. I have no doubt it will be an eye-opening, inspiring and transformative experience for visitors to our museum.”

Harland Miller said: "I think due to some attitude, or the culture that was around when I was growing up, I would think of design, and particularly graphic design, as something to subvert. Strangely — or perhaps it's entirely natural — this approach led me to an understanding and appreciation of design I wouldn't have had otherwise. Understanding and appreciation are two things the Design Museum is all about, so it's fantastic in a full-circle-kind-of-way to be showing these paintings there."

Harland Miller at the Design Museum is now open and runs until 25 January 2026. Entry is free.