13
March
2018

The French type tour !

posted in Life & travels  at 10.08 AM from Mr Cup Studio / France
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It is always a beautiful experience to visit a country or city with someone who lives it every day and who can share his version of the place. This is also the case in the other direction, to be the host and see this place where you have your habits and your routine suddenly become a magical place!
I met Mark E Sacket via Instagram, and through The Type Hunter, Keith Tatum who participated in the calendar this year. Mark shares on his account the hundreds (thousands) of photos from his ephemera collection: papers, advertising cards, packaging ... everything around type! Based in San Fransisco, he has just opened "The Box SF" to show (and sell) all these objects and this is just the beginning of a great project dedicated to the memory of our graphic culture. The following will be events, conferences, workshops ...
 
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When Mark decided to come to Paris, it was for Bibliomania, a bi-annual ephemera market! The opportunity for me to go "to the big city" and spend 10 hours rummaging through boxes and boxes of travel labels, postcards or old books! We then took the opportunity to visit some timeless stores, the impression of being in the famous "Diagon Alley"!
 
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A few days after our Parisian escapade, Mark comes to the south, to Arles where I installed Mr Cup Studio 2 years ago now. After digging into my collection, we took the road to Bordeaux, stopping us in Montpellier or Carcassone! We ended our trip in the company of Philippe, one of the authors of the works of Auguste Derrière, to drink wine while admiring his collection of old books of illustrations or the catalog of the world exhibition of 1889 by the fire and surrounded by happy cats!
 
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I think to develop this idea of "French type tour" because it is always a beautiful moment of sharing in the "real life"! Who would be in? Contact me! 

25
October
2017

Adobe Max . The community pavillon

posted in Life & travels  at 3.12 PM from Mr Cup Studio (near Arles) / France
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The past week has been crazy, with a 24 hours trip to Vegas, 3 days and a half there and 24 hours travel back! In such a short time, discovering the crazy city, and then even more crazy Adobe Max event: 12000 creatives in a giant place sharing about inspiration and technology! I will try to do more article, but you also can see the ones we do (in French) on this small dedicated page with Adobe France guests.  
 
The part I really like when I discover Adobe Max last year was the "community Pavillon":  the place where brands and small business can present their products and ideas: bookstore, type foundry, tee-shirts, posters, everything at the same place! I shared a lot on Instagram and Facebook all along the way but here come pictures I shoot in the place! Enjoy.
 

French papers

French papers team spend the 3 days of Adobe Max to roll their fresh printed posters and give them to all the happy attendees that came by their booth! And if it was only that! This year they also gave some nice book from CSA design (who design the posters and all the amazing communication of the brand) as well as a set of letterpress coasters... The thing is to come over and over to their booth, as they can bring new stuff from the boxes: stickers, badges... The only thing you can not get is the printing plates of the posters and they are beauties! 
 
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The Adobe bookstore

 The problem of going to Max, is that you can not bring everything in your luggage! So great books to get: Jessica Hische, Aaron Draplin, Kelli Anderson...
 
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 I love type and I can not lie...

Another interesting corner is the type village, where Type kit invits type foundries to present they fonts : nice to meet you Positype, Type network, Type together, Dalton Maag and more...
 
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National Poster Retrospecticus & 59 parks

How great it is to see all the amazing posters in real! Amazing colors, amazing design, did I already say amazing? The National Poster Retrospecticus is an internationally traveling poster show. The NPR features more than 400 hand-printed posters made by over 150 of the most prominent poster designers around the world. The team also create 59parks, a celebration of America National Parks.
 
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Support the makers

And on Friday, the last day of Adobe Max, creatives can show their brands and products ! the perfect moment to meet the creatives and have their books signed!  To name a few, Tad Carpenter (who did such and inspiring talk), Hellcats inc., Beeteeth,  Inch x Inch, Vichcarft, and the amazing posters of Delicious design league.
 
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I edit the images with the so easy to use new version of Lightroom CC, love it ! Thanks again for the Adobe France team to all this amazing event !  More articles here.

23
June
2017

Louis Jou printing workshop in Les Baux de Provence

posted in Print | Life & travels  at 2.21 PM from Mr Cup studio / France listening Genesis
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2 years ago, my friend Client Harvey visit me in France and we do a short type tour... We plan to organize more but never found the time to... When we visit the beautiful village of Les Baux de Provence we see a printing museum and workshop which was closed. It was the "Louis Jou" workshop, but have no more info... I now live at 15' drive from this village and some weeks ago, I heard the workshop will be open for a weekend ! Louis Jou was a printer doing engraving and typography in this place until his death in 1968. An association exists to present his legacy but they miss money to do it well. I took these pictures there... 
 
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16
May
2017

Nice to meet you Marc Bessant . Visit Real World Studio

posted in Nice to meet you | Life & travels  at 1.38 PM from Mr Cup Studio / France listening Peter Gabriel !
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Last week I had the chance to visit the Real World Studio! It was like a dream come true to me, as I discover the place in the 90's following Peter Gabriel creative world! I was invited to visit the place by Marc Bessant, the in-house designer who works for the music label and all the related projects of the studio! Marc shows me the place and invited me to met all the team and show me the treasures he has in his office: the original artworks and photos were done by Storm Thorgerson for Peter Gabriel first albums. For those who do not know him, he is the man behind the Pink Floyd album sleeves, including the most famous: Dark side of the Moon! It was amazing to see in real this work done 40 years ago for the oldest! I took a lot of photos, of course, and the best way to show them to you is to share here the interview I have done with Marc for the Walter magazine volume 2.
 
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Can you please introduce yourself?
Like many people, on leaving school I was unsure what to do with my life – I always wanted to be an actor but circumstances at that time meant it was not to be, music and art were the only other passions I had. So after a short musical interlude in London, I put pen to paper designing album covers/t-shirts/posters for local bands. Soon I noticed that all that loud music had not only affected people’s ears but also their eyes. As excited as I was about design, I couldn’t make ends meet. Eventually I got a job in a small printing firm in Bristol (which I enjoyed immensely) which taught me a lot about the process involved, something which later I would be grateful for. Then in 2000 I received a call from Real World asking me to bring my portfolio in for a viewing, I cobbled a book together and took it along...
Can you present Real World to people that may not know it?
Real World was set-up by Peter Gabriel in the 1980s, primarily as a recording facility for bands from all over the world that ordinarily wouldn’t get heard by the masses. It grew into a record label, festival creator (WOMAD), design department, multimedia centre and ultimately a place where ideas could take shape without the corporate eye over your shoulder. I work in one of the many buildings here at Real World (my office is directly above the main recording studio) where I do all the art and design for Real World records and, when possible, deal directly with the musicians involved.
 
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In 2002, you have worked directly with Peter Gabriel, for the UP album. Can you talk about this?
I wanted to give a hefty nod back to the early albums which Hypgnosis had designed and in which Peter’s face had been distorted or melted (or both) – Peter was up for that too. The cover was taken by Susan Derges by firing drips of water in front of Peter’s ace then photographing them. Peter’s blurred face is there in the background and sharp yet distorted in all the little blobs of water which acted as tiny lenses. He also wanted to include his love for photography, the original idea was to send various tracks to various photographers and see how they interpreted it. But time was against us so instead we did it the other way round where we looked at lots of photography until Peter saw pictures that he felt were connecting with the songs.
 
You are now in charge of the anniversary edition of old Peter Gabriel’s work, So box set first. How does a designer approch a project like this one, as the design is very minimalist?
 It wasn’t easy, I mean it was already ‘complete’ and held, rightly so, in such high esteem by the design business that it was like being asked to sprinkle glitter on the Crown Jewels. I thought it best to add as little design to the package as possible as there was really no point. Peter wanted to have little icons which were based on the drawings on his song-notes from the time, which became the glyphs on the spine of the box and the deboss on the 12-inch’s but other than that I was keener to make the upgrade with materials rather than designers ‘marks’, that way keeping Peter Saville’s original classy minimal vibe throughout yet still having some sense of progression of a new product.
 
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You also work on the reissue of the first Peter Gabriel’s solo album on special double vinyl. The first three albums have very famous sleeves, with photos done by Storm Thorgerson. For those who do not know him, he is the man behind the Pink Floyd album sleeves, including the most famous: Dark side of the Moon. Did you meet with Storm and did you have access to the archives for this redesign?
This was good fun to work on, those first album sleeves are great. I grew up looking at them in books so it was wonderful to get hold of the original artwork and rephotograph it, clean it up and finally put it together on the Mac. I have met Storm but long before this re-issue project arose. I dealt directly with his office for some of the original works but on the whole Peter (Gabriel) had most of the pieces already in his archive.
What’s the next project you are impatient to work on?
Depending on when this goes out, I’m not sure I can talk about it yet. I know Peter has some new music and ideas for live shows which are always good to work on. I have the next set of Peter’s vinyl re-issues to do to as well as all the other stuff (in and out of Real World) I’m involved with like the Peter's music for films (Passion or Birdy) as well as Real World albums.Right now I’m not impatient, just grateful to be busy.
 
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Thanks Marc for the visit ! Don't be sad, I will come back ! 
 
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Read the full interview in Walter Magazine volume 2
 
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