Don't mention the war...

Those of you who are English are probably familiar with the Spitfire beer advertising campaigns. (See this link for previous ads.)
War puns against the German and exaggerated nationalism are the only rules. Creating other versions of the same kind of ads is a fascinating challenge for a foreign creative: it’s all about slang, over the top puns and references that are almost impossible to understand for non-English people… And that’s why it’s exactly our copywriting teacher made us do it.

I had a go at it and the three following ads are what I came up with. Feel free to comment: do you get the references? Does it work? :)

Brainfood: Decode at the V&A

This is a late post, as I went to see the Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum more than a month ago. Besides the exhibition itself, I also went to the Friday Late edition of February, Decode Lab, dedicated to ‘dynamic live performance and installations that were scattered across the much more traditional pieces of the V&A permanent collection.

The Decode exhibition shows some of the latest developments in digital and interactive design, using for example flux of information’s, binary codes or digital data from the networks in conjunction to cutting edge technology to create interactive artworks or evolving visual representations of immaterial data.



Decode is fascinating on many levels.
Watching the exhibition through the eyes of a communication professional opens many doors. Some of the pieces may seem pointless, but they are as many experiments on what the future of digital design will be, on the technologies available and, as importantly, of the ways we can use them.
Also, many of the more interactive pieces of the exhibition are a joy to play with, and observing people reactions to them is almost as interesting as the artworks themselves. Just watching younger (as well as not so young) children go at them gives a fair overview of the most effective interactive pieces: the ones that make them move, jump, play with the feedback the artwork gives them in ways the artist may not have expected.
I noticed that the most popular artworks seemed to be mainly those with the most interactive feedback, but also those that were the most physically engaging. Here are three of my favourites:


Fabrica’s Venetian Mirror, a mirror sending back staggered, slowly imprinting black and white reflections, much like an old silver film camera. Unlike most of the other artworks of the show it has a slow process, questioning both time and the image of self. It forces to hold a pose, but even then various subjects may gradually overlay, creating strange compositions and a slowly evolving stream of time.


Ross Phillips’s Videogrid is exactly what the name says: a twenty screen grid showing 3 second-long loops of footage of the visitors of the exhibitions who can film themselves with a webcam. Each new loop replaces another, and the Videogrid is a jerky, self-rewriting testimonial of the people that were there. If the proclivity of people in filming themselves didn’t surprise me, I was amazed at how playful people were in front of the camera, not hesitating to do stupid stuff when the Videogrid could be seen by everyone in the exhibition.


Mehmet Akten’s Body Paint allows visitor to throw colourful bursts of paint to a wall via a motion sensor, the colour and the quantity of paint depending of the amplitude of body movements. I found it fun, good for the soul and strangely addicting.

The Power of Understatement

Yes, another car post. But don't get any ideas; I really could care less about cars… Except I'm a visual person, and being so I fall easily prey of the unusual looking, the pretty and the eye-stopper.

My school being where it is, I walk past beautiful cars everyday. But one especially caught my attention.

She's a pretty lady, all black, but the really interesting thing is the matte paintjob.
It was the first time I ever saw one and I have to confess I love it. It's incredibly eye-catching, the power of understatement among all those shiny cars…

Since the first starry-eyed day I did my homework. It appears this kind of paintjob is not as uncommon as I thought among very luxurious cars and is quite tricky to keep clean. I also saw much bigger cars with a similar matte paint, a Land Rover and a Mercedes: both did pull it off beautifully.
Visually the matte is interesting in the way it catches light. It could be said dull, but the contrast with other cars really works in its favor. As I said it’s a nice demonstration of the power of understatement and sobriety as ways to stand out and differentiate.
It’s also a brave choice in the sense that when downplaying, the risk is actually not being seen. But of course, the fact that this kind of paintjob is actually an expensive one only adds to the attraction.

The Wallace Collection

Last Tuesday we did a half-a-day long workshop in our Design class.
The assignment was to go to the the Wallace Collection (which is two streets away from our building), visit and take pictures, and then put together a foldaway booklet with four pictures linked to four words summarizing the museum as we saw it.


For those who don’t know the Wallace Collection, the place is crazy. Absolutely stuffed with baroque and rococo furniture, gold everywhere, sculptures, paintings, huge military rooms full of swords and armours…
I took a lot of picture of the patterns I could find, including the incredible wallpapers (it was different for each room). Another series I took was of juxtapositions between different objects, sculptures and paintings…


















I finally decided to use this last selection of pictures to convey some of the feelings induced by the place, focalizing on single pieces and outlining how they reflect the whole collection :