Escif

Spotted a piece by Escif, one of my favourite street artists this week on Fashion Street.
I was sans camera so here is one I found after.

IBM + Noma Bar

Here are some posters that I have just finished working on at Ogilvy Paris, for IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign. They are illustrated by the awesome Noma Bar.

“When we talk about a smarter planet, you can say that it has two dimensions. One is to be more efficient, be less destructive, to connect different aspects of life which do affect each other in more conscience and deliberate and intelligent ways. But the other is also to generate fundamentally new insights, new activity, new forms of social relations. So you could look at the planet as an information, creation and transmission system, and the universe was hearing its information but we weren’t. But increasingly now we can, early days, baby steps days, but we can actually begin to hear the planet talking to us.”

Creative Director: Susan Westre
Art Director: Ginevra Capece
Copywriter: Fergus O’hare

Subconscious illustration

We are now sans ping pong table in the office. These are dark times.

Generational gap or freak of nature?

Bargaining with shops. Is that even possible? I am totally under the assumption that most people who work in shops are not in the position to be able to cut me a deal. But I am led to believe from the wiser of us that it is commonplace. Would I try? No. I don’t even haggle with my mechanic.

Samedi

Paris
28 degrees
sans amis

I didn’t managed to make it out of the apartment until midday on Saturday, despite my good intentions. I was aiming to have a look at a flea market in the morning.

Instead I decided to do “The Route”. This was set out really soon after I moved here as the route to visit as many of the places I liked as possible. It covers Saint-Germain, the islands and the Marais comfortably and sometimes Beaubourg if I am brave.

I headed straight for Le Bon Marché on the metro and had a nosey around the awesome food hall and got lots of inspiration for food. Then popped in next door the the Conran Store and got lots of inspiration for furnishings! I say inspiration, I mean cravings.

Next, I headed up towards Saint-Germain-des-Prés along some of the windier roads and found Coco & co which is a cute restaurant down a tiny alley behind ‘Loft’ which serves just eggs. I was more interested in their little takeaway window offering BAGELS. I spent much of my first year in Paris hunting down bagels and so to me the excitement is entirely justified. Next on the list was to leaf through the great design and photography section in the bookstore La Hune. It has to be one of my favourites in Paris. It is an amazing tiny little shop with the creative stuff all upstairs on the mezzanine level. It is also straight opposite Café de Flore and even if this does sound uber touristy, I could murder one of their club sandwiches, a cold glass of white and some juicy people watching any day.

Talking of touristy, I walked through the backstreets up to Rue de Buci and fought my way through tourists up to Saint-Michel. Then more tourists, more tourist and MORE TOURISTS down Rue de la Hunchette. Which is mad on any day of the week let alone Saturday. maybe this is why I don’t do this route anymore? It is fulll of greek, lebanese and italien places and men stand in the doorways and try to lure you in with “Madamoiselles!” and winks. I was flattered of course.

I was spat out onto the pavement of Shakepeare and co, which is a haven at any time of the year. I used to like coming late at night in winter and spending some time warming up and looking for the next great novel to read. I don’t think I have ever found a more cosy shop, or one that similarly impossible to get thrown out of. I have seen people asleep in here with others stepping over them. It was heaving on Saturday with people spilling out onto the pavement all with books in hand, smoking and chatting.

Just over the river onto the island is a great flower market and it has to be good really because you have to get past the wave of solid tourists, bum bags, sports shoes, sun visors, guide books and sun screen to get there. Not even joking.

Jumped back onto the right bank, up through Beaubourg and the Pompidou with it’s cool tree houses all over it at the moment, then over to the Marais. Through the winding streets past the “boys”. It was hot don’t forget and things were getting steamy outside Café Cox!

I motored straight through, over to Beaumarchais because Merci had a sale on!!!! Scream!

But by then I was zzz

Voila!
Samedi

Living in a cloud

I was reading a paper on the state of cloud computing this morning and it is predicted by 2020 that we will all be living in a cloud, or cloud computing.

2020? Try 2010. Spotify.

Spotify allows me to access all ‘my’ music from any internet connected device. But what do I mean by my music? I do not own one CD, not one. I haven’t brought one in years. I remember burning the few that I did own to mp3 but I doubt I even have those in their original format. The hoards of mps I now possess are strewn across multiple computers, hard drives and devices, with my ‘everyday collection’ squeezing onto an ancient ipod. The maintenance of keeping music updated on my home computer, my work one and my ipod for in between is exhausting. So I find myself relying on spotify for both work and home. Sounds simple enough and not too ‘modern’ but I am suprised my my lack of desire to ever have a hard (or digital) copy of much of the music I listen on spotify.

The future will be streaming. Why download a movie when you can stream it and be able to rewatch it at your leisure from any device you want. The personal computer will be a thing of the past. When every computer will be able to access all of your personal assets.

For me del.icio.us paved the way, flickr helped, google reader maintained and spotify helped rid me of my hoarding tendancies.

Six items or less

So there is a really nice project going around called “Six items or less” and involves a whole slew of people willing to only wear the same 6 pieces of clothing for a month. As an experiement I am not sure how new or exciting it is and we all know that one guy who always wears the same thing everyday anyway. But I think it says something that almost all of the people on the roster are creative types. I am not talking strict heavy rimmed glasses, t-shirts and skinny jeans but plenty of advertising lark, designers, students etc. Is it that it’s only people who have total freedom of dress at work and a slight expectation to dress a little different that this kind of project appeals to?

What is more worrying is that I don’t think its a million miles away from my norm. Six items really is a stretch and the experiment does allow you to have muliples of the same garment, but I pretty much go to work in t-shirt and jeans everyday. Still it takes me a scarily long amount of time to decide even that. Maybe Six Items or Less are right and life is better in uniform.

Borough Market

I went to Borough Market for the first time this morning. It’s embarrassing I know. Never really been a ‘foody’ person, but this will change you I am sure. It was packed and had a totally different atmosphere to the rest of town. As soon as you get out of the tube there are people everywhere, lots of the usual “4 for a pound!” stuff but also lots of people stuffing their faces and walking. Not very british at all. We usually frown upon that sort of thing, it’s up there with putting your feet on seats and spitting. The food is amazing and everything from hot-dogs to cheese toasties to curry, WOW the curry.

Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean’s Blue Hole

Underwater Hockey (Octopush)

This sport looks like great fun and awesome exercise. It’s hockey but on the bottom of a pool and you have to hold your breath for ages, fight for the puck but get to swim with fins. I want to play.