Looking at other people’s work can inspire all kinds of feelings (jealousy, arrogance, humility and frustration being some of mine). No matter what these emotions are, there’s always something to be learned from them. But the most valuable reaction you can have to someone else’s creativity is to be reenergized by it. I’m not a designer, but I get a kick out of French graphic artist duo M/M. Their posters, ads and album covers are like erratic puzzles of slightly chaotic beauty that make me look at design in a different way. How come these juxtaposed images seem so meaningful together? Why do these chicken scratch letters look so right? Why do these swirly pencil drawn abstractions make me dream?

I’m not alone in feeling this way. M/M’s Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak have fans that range from Björk to Calvin Klein to the contemporary art museum Centre Pompidou in Paris. Their work straddles fine art and commercialism, which they reportedly believe is an art form in itself. And perhaps it is. You can judge from yourself by getting the recent poster catalogue of their work that is now available on their web site http://www.mmparis.com. There is a low budget and a big budget option. The big budget option involves ordering the physical 44-page catalogue for 200 Euros. The cheaper alternative is to download the pdf to your desktop. Either way, you will probably have that precious moment of seeing new possibilities.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 11:32 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.