George Maciunas’s designer identity and the visual language of Fluxus

This article explored how the identity of George Maciunas founder and artist of the Fluxus Movement as a designer and architect is reflected in the diverse works by various artists contained within the artist boxes known as Fluxus Box and Fluxkit. The study examined how George Maciunas and other Fluxus artists effectively used the visual and graphic approaches to experimental, chance-based book, typography, album and packaging designs in line with the Fluxus concept of language. The connections with pre-Fluxus 20th-century avant-garde art movements and the influence of these movements on Fluxus founded by George Maciunas in 1961 and active across many European countries, Japan and the United States have been analysed through selected works. Furthermore, the paper considers how George Maciunas’s role as a designer in guiding the movement shaped within the context of visual and graphic design, focusing on the works of Yoko Ono and Shigeko Kubota, two key female figures associated with George Maciunas and Fluxus. Based on the findings, it is suggested that within the Fluxus Movement, graphic and visual design elements were utilised in mass-produced works with the support of designer George Maciunas and by Fluxus artists. It is recommended that research be expanded due to the effective use of design elements by George Maciunas and the artists of the Fluxus Movement.