"Opinel" shirts

Last week I introduced some of my new grphics for shirts and here newer ones!
Didn't I promised one new collection every new season? And here comes the autumn / fall. Winter is coming.

As you can see this season is all about the traditional wooden knife from Savoy.

Except I didn't asked to use the Opinel brand so I'll say this is about the traditional alpin knife. After all the profile is exactly the same all over our mountains from France to Italy. Except the Opinel is thicker because real knives have curves.

 

And the online shop offers new products like the stickers I was waiting for a long time:

So I've just updated all my previous visuals from the words to the animals and you can choose more than 140 products for every graphic, all available in several colours.

You do have choice now!

 

The website to buy is still the same: https://shop.spreadshirt.fr/unitedsavoy/

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Habana is 500

It said that the very first  mess in Cuba was celebrated 500 years ago!
So the American need this kind of point to officialize the birth of a city, like no one was there before?

 I don't care, well I care as I've been in Habana 16 years ago. I'm not planning to go back there, maybe one day.
I wrote a few notes for the WorldWideDesignBlogs after that, blogs that are no more online. I was planning to re-publish these, I should start one day!

Before I'm going to prepare myself a mojito, even if the mint from my garden is not very fresh...
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Yellow Jakets

"It's yellow, it's ugly, it's nice with nothing.
But it can save your life."

There is a movement of demonstrations tomorrow everywhere in France and if you are in you should wear a security jaket.

 The main contestation is about the taxes we have to pay on fuel for cars, as in France we pay more taxes than fuel price.
So they ask everyone to put this yellow jaket on the dashboard, and tomorrow to stop the country by not going to a bank, not taking fuel, not going to a movie theater, not taking any transport, not buying anything. Well, that’ll be a normal Saturday, isn’t it?

This “popular movement” allows to ask some interesting questions.

Return of the Peddler

5 years ago I've been working for the promotion of the Beaufort cheese... which celebrates this year the 50 years of its protected name! For this occasion they wanted to make more events, 50 all over the year, and they choose to restart with one of the people having worked with them in this operation. My schedule was kind of free so I candidated and I've been chosen (to be fair I was the only one from the past summers to be able to make my time free).

So here I go again through mountains and cows (that's a nice joke in French, that's doesn't work at all in English) with 2 missions.

Firstly to animate meeting with producers and consumers. Mainly by visiting farms and going in nature to speak with producer about their daily job.

The most important is to take photo of every person working for this cheese. Mostly the producers, there are more than 400 farms so there is a lot of people to see! And that's so much fun! Because that's a nice way to meet people and discover how they live. Even more as that allows me to see buildings I could never saw! There are the all-new farms with big spaces and facilities:

and the opposite with very old farm where everything is handmade, from taking the shit away from the inside to... taking the milk from the caw!

The oldest one I've seen, still in use and mostly in its original form, is from 1618!!

Other ones are in a old house, even in the former village school:

I'm one of the very few to see all that jazz, I'm a very happy few!
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Novembre 11th

2 days ago was November 11th, a not-working day commemorating the end of th WWI.

So, I was not working and that was great. Other people were working.
There are people who never stop, like doctors and medical wokers, trains, and soon. Freelancers work for their own so (apart their lack of citizen involvement) they can manage their job like they want. And finally there are employees who worked on a free-day like on a usual working day, and I think this is shocking.

For example the city gardens guards. There were not working on November 1st, so I assume that the local authorities like better to respect a religious day than a hommage day to people who died "for our freedom".
I thought France was a lay state!

Be sure to understand, I am not a patriot. That's the opposite: I would define myself as an internationalist. I do am a strong pacifist. But I still take care of this days when we have a thought for the poor people who have been killed in a war served for the glory the power and the wealth of a few powerfull persons who certainly did not send their children to fight.
Some things never change as France is always fighting in the countries where Total and Bolloré need it.

There was no more celebration for the Russian Revolution 100th anniversary a few days before.
The Bolsheviks' take-over, with quasi no blood, inside a revolutionary period was taking an argument from Lenin about this war for the rich and not for the peoples.
The peoples who had a large place during the Second Komintern by adding a part about self-determination: fighting for the people's choice to free from colonization.
A night, a quiet take-over, that changed the world for a whole century. And we didn't had anything about that in medias? Well, yes, french-german TV Arte broadcasted Battleship Potemkine.
Why this silence?
Certainly this is not good to celebrate people who revolted against the power of the happy few rich families. For what? Redistribute wealth to everyone? Are you crazy? Rich need more money to have more money to... redistribute it? You know they don't want to avoid the fisc, they are in an hurry to save what they need to survive!
So that was a week during which I would have appreciate to see more celebrations where people could have shown they are thinking about what are their lives and what is the system in which we live.
A lost hope.
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2022 Olympics

Beijing will host the 2022 Winter Olympics, the news is from Friday morning.

So we all are very sad for Ugine, which was not a real candidate, and for Dubaï, which could have been as logical as the chinese capital where the Summer Olympics has been not so long ago. An historic double (summer + winter Olympics in the same city) that affirm the international importance of the CRP.

Against Beijing was Almaty (yes, there is always one unknown original that use it to advertise for tourist attraction) about "humans sized" Olympics (hey, like Ugine!) an REAL SNOW because Beijing should produce articificial snow... exactly like it could have been in my proposal for DubaÏ 2022, so it's was not an insanity when you see how Olympics Comity works!

China is not famous as a winter nation but there are more and more winter resorts and I know the french skiing school offered training period to prepare its monitors to welcome chinese tourists, so there is an economical coherence in this choice. And more, it seems that the problems in the organization of Rio 2016 could help big countries (autoritarian?) which will make what they need to respect the schedules...
Although Kazakhstan does not seem to be an example in the collaborative democraty, but the city seems really nice right at the bottom of the mountains. Did you know that the modern apple should be originated fron this region? It's an argument, isn't it?
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Vectorized 2012 French Presidential Election

I don't kow why the French presidential election wasn't attractive to me til now, and I don't know why suddenly I've been attracted.

There are more TV show and press covers than in 2007 but it seems that it hasn't been well-seller, maybe journalists were more passionated than citizens.

Well, here is a curious and amazed tour on candidates one week before the first round. I'm trying to explains graphically the mood of each one as it comes to me from medias:

10 years after 9 11

Today we celebrated the 10 years in a public garden.
A few of us, with the sun, without candle but with fruit juices (fermented or not) cheeses from Savoie and hand-made cookies.

Thank to all of you who came.





Please, September 11 2001 was my arrival in Nantes. 10 years, yet, 1/3 of my life!



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Seen in the city - 12: Heat wave

Seen in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, France.

Seen in the city - 11: Ghost

Seen in St Herblain, Loire-Atlantique, France.

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Seen in the city - 10: Hot rod

Seen in Ugine, Savoie, France.

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Seen in the city - 9: Ron y Cocaa-Colaaaaa

Seen in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, France.

Bacardi (gone from Cuba when Castro won) is ''born to be with'' the Cuba Libre (rhum + Coca, you know, one of the U.S.A. Symbols) is a good idea.

To candidate 1: Monster

Monster is a job-searching website. You can make a curriculum, search for employments, apply to these, and you can also receive the announces direct by e-mail.
This year they have advertised:

My first idea was to, yeah, they founded Céline in less than 24h (Jack Bauer ?) for De Graët Consulting but they don't tell me how much time Céline was searching for a job on Monster.
Finally I think that the enemployed are yet on Monster, and for free. The firms have to pay (so the society can live) but they may search their candidats with others ways thant Monster (this is what make the website alive). So it's logical to advertize for firms and not for applyers.
But are you sure, seen this poster, that the firms know it?


In fact my first idea was to know if Céline is really working for De Graët Consulting or if she's a model just for a picture...
Maybe, Céline, if you come on my blog, you can write me!



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Seen in the city - 8: 3 yachts in the city

It's summertime, it's yacht-time.

Seen in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, France.

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Seen in the city - 7: Reserved parking

First there is the ''reserved parking'' fly (how the shops can know from which cars theirs customers are coming?). Then there is also another blue justicer (but this one should have his underwears under the pants):

Seen in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, France.

This is crazy? This is Teypaaaaaaaaa!!!

300 is a  Zack Snyder movie based on the Frank Miller's graphic novel, distributed by Warner Bros.
I didn't find who designed the poster.

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Seen in the city - 6: Sealed car

What happens to a car which have crossed the Iron SuperTeyp?

seen in Le Pellerin, Loire-Altantique, France

Too much americanism in a few days, I need to balance with the voting pictures:

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Seen in the city - 5: Rainbow

As I offer an synthetic observation of the city I've started a collection of pictures of the city, what could be more normal for an urban designer?

So here is this topic back with a rainbow falling on a house, what could be more poetic?

Seen in Saint-Herblain, Loire-Atlantique, France.

All this poetry is not enough to forget to vote, go, click on the eye:

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Music Feast

Yesterday was the Feast of Music and like all June 21th we can say that music wasn't in the feast...

As a musician I should be happy in the feast of musicians.
Sorry, but as the May 1st is the feast of workers, so workers don't work, amateurs are less and less in the June 21th.

If I were a designer - 5: Touristic dog

Some pictures from the Royal de luxe's show this week in Nantes, and a crazy idea:

to visit the city riding a giant mechanical dog, surrounded by cars, buses, cycles and pedestrians...



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Seen in the city - 4: This is an hold up!

Vu à Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, France.

Even Guignol is attacked, this economical crisis is hard...