An interesting article about a design firm in Paris whose tagline is 'Give Yourself the Worst'.
It all sounds very deliberately nasty, and by their own admission - it is. Something caught me during the interview, where the designer, Jean-Emmanuel "Valnoir" Simoulin, mentioned one of his underlying strategies for catching attention. When the interviewer puts forth the idea that Valnoir uses quite a lot of humour in his work, the artist replies:
"...what used to be called "second degree" in French. Something that Americans absolutely can't grasp. It's like pretending to take yourself exaggeratingly seriously, but deep down you are laughing out loud because it's a huge joke, which makes everyone uncomfortable."
I'll have to think on it some more, but that idea is interesting in the extreme.
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