Art Drop

Because those days I'm quite overworked (and also kind of lazy when I'm finally home), this is an art drop from one of my three visits at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris a few month back.

I love visiting museums with a sketchbook at hand, it forces me to look differently, to look deeper, to look, somehow, more than I do when I'm just strolling around from one painting to another.

Click to enlarge the sketchs.

Some animals by French sculptor François Pompon.

Young man.

Hermès leaning on a pillar.

Ravachol and Chauchard, two small satirical plaster cast by Fremiet.

A young faun feeding bear cubs.

Bourguereau's Dante et Virgile, which I find incredibly powerful and evocative despite the obvious excess of the composition and the slightly wrong anatomy.

When in Rome…

do as Romans do. And when you're in Thailand, greet as Thaï people greet.



Ronald doing the wai is an easy starting point for a pretense of multiculturalism… At least kids seem to like it.

Google pac-man

You may have seen the awesome pac-man game on Google homepage on May 21st, a nice way to pay homage to the game’s anniversary.



What you may not know it that it was a real game, one that users could play (and that, according to the Rescue Time Blog, it “cost” around 4.82 million hours of time spend playing rather doing others more boring things). :D
If like me you tend to use the google search bar imbedded in your navigator and didn’t caught the game on Friday, fear not, it is now online at http://www.google.com/pacman/, you just have to click “insert coin” to fall prey of the joys of procrastination.

Pimpin’ Ducks

I used the (almost) infamous free range vector duck and customized it for the Pimp My Brand team I worked with all week on the Starbucks VIA pitch.
(And before you ask, no there is absolutely no link between ducks & coffee, but ducks and I go a long way back, so it was a bit of an inside joke. Remind me to tell you one day how I once suggested to train ninja ducks to get ride of the pigeons in Paris as an answer to a Creative Thinking assignment aiming to improve life in the city... ^ ^ )







And now you can download the package and spread the love with your own customizations. :)
(Or ask me to do it for you if you are lazy... ^^)

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 miniskirt theory

The rule of thumb known as “the miniskirt theory” applies to almost everything: viral movies, client presentations, blog posts, cover letters, even sex.

Here it is, in all its concise glory:
It* has to be like a miniskirt: long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep the attention.

* The viral movie, client presentation, blog post, cover letter, sex.

I love it.

Sorry we're fucked

Last Sunday, life threw at me the most randomly desperate picture ever. Like, for real.
I managed to catch it before the three-legged dog walked away.



This is the stuff of nightmares, or of very cool Punk album covers, I can't quite decide.