Biography
Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak formed their studio, M/M (Paris), in 1992. Since then, it has become one of this generation’s most distinctive and influential voices in graphic design. Having met at art school in Paris. Since then they have worked together as graphic designers and art directors on fashion, music and art projects.
Originally working for small independent music labels, M/M soon caught the attention of the fashion world, and later developed long-term collaborations with a rich array of iconic artists, art directors and musical artists – most notably, Björk and Madonna. They have also produced unexpected three-dimensional designs for the stage, restaurants and perfume.
Since founding M/M (Paris) in 1992, Augustyniak and Amzalag have had a strong hand in shaping the visual culture of the art, fashion and music worlds. They have had longstanding creative relationships with artists like Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno and curators like Obrist. They have worked on catalogs for institutions like the Musée d’Art Moderne and the Pompidou Center. In 2005, M/M was part of a contemporary art show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and early last year had their first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery — Haunch of Venison in London (in Paris they are represented by Air de Paris). They have also designed productions for the Théâtre de Lorient in Brittany, ad campaigns for Balenciaga, Yohji Yamamoto and Calvin Klein Jeans and fashion editorials for V Magazine with their close friends and constant collaborators, the Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. For two years M/M (Paris) served as the art directors for French Vogue, redesigning the magazine for the current editor, Carine Roitfeld. This season and next, you can see their handiwork in new campaigns for Givenchy and Stella McCartney; a fashion shoot they art-directed with the photographer Craig McDean appears in the June issue of W Magazine. And in music they are perhaps best known for their collaborations with Bjork, for whom they directed a video and created a typeface.
“I really think they changed Paris in a way that goes beyond graphic design,” says Obrist, who has worked with them on books and catalogs since the mid-’90s. Obrist thinks of M/M (Paris) in much the same way that Augustyniak and Amzalag think of themselves: not as graphic designers but as creators of a visual language that not only bridges the parallel worlds in which they work but ultimately transcends them as well. “Today we are used to the interplay of art and fashion, art and design, art and music,” Obrist says. “It was not the case 15 years ago.”
Augustyniak and Amzalag met in the late ’80s, when they were both students at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, a place they describe as having a stultifyingly classical approach to the practice of art but a surprisingly progressive one when it came to theory. According to Amzalag, the communications department was irreconcilably split between commercial and noncommercial design, and while students were provided with the tools to present a concept, they were rarely encouraged to come up with one on their own. “Advertising was evil — not to be touched,” Amzalag says. “It was a utopian approach to graphic design. We knew it was a dead end.” But a few of the lectures stuck with them, and one in particular, titled “My Friend Fernand Léger,” was something of an epiphany. “This is where we got the idea that there is no such place called art or culture but it’s all interwoven,” Augustyniak says.
Amzalag was eventually kicked out of the school, and Augustyniak went on to get a Master’s in graphic design at the Royal College of Art in London. The two started to work together in the fall of 1991, and their first clients were in the French music industry, more by default than by choice. “No one wanted to work with music in France because there is no such thing as pop culture in France,” Augustyniak says. “It was not exciting.” But they were excited to be working and approached each job with a seriousness perhaps far beyond its merit. For one of their first commissions, an album sleeve for the singer Silvain Vanot, they created a collage from Polaroids, paper clips and old-fashioned cloth labels like the ones your mother sewed into your underwear when you went to sleep-away camp. M/M are at pains to explain the multiple levels of spontaneity and experience they extended to the project, analyzing it as if deconstructing a dense literary text. “We are creating material for archaeologists,” Amzalag says, acknowledging that these layers of meaning were most likely lost on pretty much everyone except the two of them.
Around that time they were also asked to do an album for Mathilda May, a French actress who was trying to jump-start a singing career. “The biggest disaster in French history,” Amzalag says, not indicating whether he means the album’s sleeve, the album itself or the actress. But it was M/M’s first chance to work on a project from beginning to end, including hiring a photographer and a stylist. Amzalag pulls out a prop from the shoot — a dusty sign with a hand-painted double M — recalling how the two set out with ambitious ideas about type, signs, symbols, the history of graphic design. “In the end,” Amzalag says, “she looked like a hooker.”
It was becoming painfully obvious to them that the divide between art and commerce was wider than they had imagined. “People wanted a service. “ ‘I pay you, give me what I want,’ ” Augustyniak recalls. And yet they continued to insist that they were not guns for hire. They wanted to be thought of as equal partners, something they still insist upon today. “We are designers but as we define that role, not just as a vector for someone’s ideas,” Augustyniak says. “It comes through us so we somehow distort it. We make that clear rather than hiding it.”
M/M (Paris) is not of the school that believes good graphic design is transparent or, worse, altogether invisible. They have been known to cut up and reassemble photographs into densely layered collages or to deface them with elaborate, occasionally erotic illustrations and ornate, hand-drawn type. What may have started out as a fairly straightforward advertising image can end up looking like a Rorschach test. An early campaign for Balenciaga featured the model Christy Turlington being stalked by an ominous blob. In another, an orgy of cutout models unfolds like a magnificent butterfly.
By their own estimate, M/M have something like 40 typefaces in various stages of development. Many fonts are created for a specific project or proposal only to find their true calling in another context. Allegrette, a primary-school-inspired font, which has come to be known as Bjork type, was originally conceived for an album called “Art of Singing.” (“With this typeface,” Amzalag says, “everything looks very cute. Even a bad poem looks cool.”) That fell through, but Allegrette materialized on a poster for the Théâtre de Lorient and then made its way to the cover of Bjork’s DVD “Volumen,” where it finally struck the right chord. This progression is not irrelevant — not for them anyway. “An image never interests us as such,” reads M/M’s mission statement. “Its relevance lies in the fact that it contains the sum of preceding dialogues, stories, experiences with various interlocutors and the fact that it induces a questioning of these pre-existing values. A good image should be in between two others, a previous one and another to come.”
To create the font Cesar, they commissioned a small child who did not know how to write to draw the alphabet. Each of the resulting 26 cryptic scribbles corresponds to a different letter. (When asked to contribute to the design of a cafe on the rue Ãtienne Marcel, they incorporated this decorative font into the pattern on the carpet. Unbeknown to most diners, there is an entire text encrypted on the floor.) Yet another alphabet of theirs is carved out of portraits that van Lamsweerde and Matadin took of 26 models. Ann-Catherine becomes the A, Bridget the B and so on all the way to Zoe.
It is difficult to discern whether M/M’s philosophy is an honest, logical expression of their interest in the creative process or merely a defiant effort to assert their own importance. “They have a unique signature,” says Nicolas Ghesquière, who has worked with them since his second season as creative director for Balenciaga. The designer Stella McCartney is another satisfied client. “They bring a fresh eye to the advertising campaigns, and they understand who I am and the DNA of the brand.” But there are those who when they look at M/M’s work see nothing but the designers’ fingerprints, who say that the only ideas that they are interested in communicating are their own. “But these were people who weren’t working with us who were saying this,” Amzalag is quick to point out. “When you are going to work with us, be aware that you are working with two personalities — two individuals,” Augustyniak says. “That doesn’t mean that something won’t be conveyed, but accept that it will have a level of distortion.”
Nowhere was this level of distortion more evident than in the show at the Palais de Tokyo. What was originally conceived as two separate exhibitions — one of the contemporary art collection of a prominent Greek collector, the other an M/M (Paris) retrospective — evolved into “Translation,” which is described in the accompanying limited-edition catalog as “a visual trip operated and articulated by M/M (Paris) with the Dakis Joannou collection.” In the Palais de Tokyo’s sprawling industrial galleries, well-known pieces by Jeff Koons, Maurizio Cattelan, Chris Ofili and Mike Kelley duked it out with advertising images for Calvin Klein Jeans, Balenciaga invitations and a trove of posters created by M/M (Paris) for various Théâtre de Lorient productions. The artist Yinka Shonibare’s piece, “Dressing Down,” was installed upon a variation of the Café Étienne Marcel carpeting, in a room lined with frenetic M/M-designed wallpaper, while the title for Kara Walker’s “Being the True Account of the Life of N,” writ extra large in the model alphabet, threatened to overtake the artwork itself. However visually stunning, the raucous installation often seemed less like a dialogue and more like a shouting match, with M/M apparently winning. “An art collection,” M/M explained, “is an individual’s chance to write their own story using art. In our way of working over the past 10 years, we have also collected little stories. When someone asks us to do an exhibition, it’s the opportunity for us to de-archive and re-edit all those microhistories.”
And how did the art world receive this creative intervention? “They still don’t want to talk about it,” Augustyniak says.
Their solo show in London caused a similar sensation. Titled “Haunch of Venison/Venison of Haunch,” M/M (Paris) created a visual identity for the gallery, which has been open since only 2002, reflected in the mirror of their own experience. In other words, a portrait of the gallery but also a self-portrait. “It’s not like we are graphic designers and suddenly decided to become artists,” they insist. But the approach, they say, made both people from the art world uncomfortable and people from the design world uncomfortable. This, we are meant to understand, was a good thing.
Recently, Hans Ulrich Obrist commissioned M/M (Paris) to create a Web site for the Serpentine Gallery, where he is now a director. The Serpentine already has a perfectly functional if totally unremarkable Web site, with a nice picture of the gallery in its bucolic setting in Kensington Gardens, and useful information about opening hours and future exhibitions. “There is no one better to do this,” Obrist exclaims, “because we knew that they would never want to design a Web site. So what would it be? An anti-Web site? An invisible Web site?” In answering his own questions, Obrist veers off into a tangent about quantum physics, and suddenly he is no longer talking about a Web site as we — or for that matter even Craig Newmark — know it, but a virtual art institution, an entire parallel world unto itself. If you click a button on the Serpentine Web site, you can see the M/M work in progress. It is a fat, squiggly animated line that emerges and disappears in an endless loop — a serpent eating its own tail.
Sources: http://www.thamesandhudson.com/M_to_M_of_M_M_Paris_/9780500289938
http://showstudio.com/contributor/m_m_paris
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/magazine/03Style-paris-t.html?pagewanted=all
Originally working for small independent music labels, M/M soon caught the attention of the fashion world, and later developed long-term collaborations with a rich array of iconic artists, art directors and musical artists – most notably, Björk and Madonna. They have also produced unexpected three-dimensional designs for the stage, restaurants and perfume.
Since founding M/M (Paris) in 1992, Augustyniak and Amzalag have had a strong hand in shaping the visual culture of the art, fashion and music worlds. They have had longstanding creative relationships with artists like Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno and curators like Obrist. They have worked on catalogs for institutions like the Musée d’Art Moderne and the Pompidou Center. In 2005, M/M was part of a contemporary art show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and early last year had their first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery — Haunch of Venison in London (in Paris they are represented by Air de Paris). They have also designed productions for the Théâtre de Lorient in Brittany, ad campaigns for Balenciaga, Yohji Yamamoto and Calvin Klein Jeans and fashion editorials for V Magazine with their close friends and constant collaborators, the Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. For two years M/M (Paris) served as the art directors for French Vogue, redesigning the magazine for the current editor, Carine Roitfeld. This season and next, you can see their handiwork in new campaigns for Givenchy and Stella McCartney; a fashion shoot they art-directed with the photographer Craig McDean appears in the June issue of W Magazine. And in music they are perhaps best known for their collaborations with Bjork, for whom they directed a video and created a typeface.
“I really think they changed Paris in a way that goes beyond graphic design,” says Obrist, who has worked with them on books and catalogs since the mid-’90s. Obrist thinks of M/M (Paris) in much the same way that Augustyniak and Amzalag think of themselves: not as graphic designers but as creators of a visual language that not only bridges the parallel worlds in which they work but ultimately transcends them as well. “Today we are used to the interplay of art and fashion, art and design, art and music,” Obrist says. “It was not the case 15 years ago.”
Augustyniak and Amzalag met in the late ’80s, when they were both students at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, a place they describe as having a stultifyingly classical approach to the practice of art but a surprisingly progressive one when it came to theory. According to Amzalag, the communications department was irreconcilably split between commercial and noncommercial design, and while students were provided with the tools to present a concept, they were rarely encouraged to come up with one on their own. “Advertising was evil — not to be touched,” Amzalag says. “It was a utopian approach to graphic design. We knew it was a dead end.” But a few of the lectures stuck with them, and one in particular, titled “My Friend Fernand Léger,” was something of an epiphany. “This is where we got the idea that there is no such place called art or culture but it’s all interwoven,” Augustyniak says.
Amzalag was eventually kicked out of the school, and Augustyniak went on to get a Master’s in graphic design at the Royal College of Art in London. The two started to work together in the fall of 1991, and their first clients were in the French music industry, more by default than by choice. “No one wanted to work with music in France because there is no such thing as pop culture in France,” Augustyniak says. “It was not exciting.” But they were excited to be working and approached each job with a seriousness perhaps far beyond its merit. For one of their first commissions, an album sleeve for the singer Silvain Vanot, they created a collage from Polaroids, paper clips and old-fashioned cloth labels like the ones your mother sewed into your underwear when you went to sleep-away camp. M/M are at pains to explain the multiple levels of spontaneity and experience they extended to the project, analyzing it as if deconstructing a dense literary text. “We are creating material for archaeologists,” Amzalag says, acknowledging that these layers of meaning were most likely lost on pretty much everyone except the two of them.
Around that time they were also asked to do an album for Mathilda May, a French actress who was trying to jump-start a singing career. “The biggest disaster in French history,” Amzalag says, not indicating whether he means the album’s sleeve, the album itself or the actress. But it was M/M’s first chance to work on a project from beginning to end, including hiring a photographer and a stylist. Amzalag pulls out a prop from the shoot — a dusty sign with a hand-painted double M — recalling how the two set out with ambitious ideas about type, signs, symbols, the history of graphic design. “In the end,” Amzalag says, “she looked like a hooker.”
It was becoming painfully obvious to them that the divide between art and commerce was wider than they had imagined. “People wanted a service. “ ‘I pay you, give me what I want,’ ” Augustyniak recalls. And yet they continued to insist that they were not guns for hire. They wanted to be thought of as equal partners, something they still insist upon today. “We are designers but as we define that role, not just as a vector for someone’s ideas,” Augustyniak says. “It comes through us so we somehow distort it. We make that clear rather than hiding it.”
M/M (Paris) is not of the school that believes good graphic design is transparent or, worse, altogether invisible. They have been known to cut up and reassemble photographs into densely layered collages or to deface them with elaborate, occasionally erotic illustrations and ornate, hand-drawn type. What may have started out as a fairly straightforward advertising image can end up looking like a Rorschach test. An early campaign for Balenciaga featured the model Christy Turlington being stalked by an ominous blob. In another, an orgy of cutout models unfolds like a magnificent butterfly.
By their own estimate, M/M have something like 40 typefaces in various stages of development. Many fonts are created for a specific project or proposal only to find their true calling in another context. Allegrette, a primary-school-inspired font, which has come to be known as Bjork type, was originally conceived for an album called “Art of Singing.” (“With this typeface,” Amzalag says, “everything looks very cute. Even a bad poem looks cool.”) That fell through, but Allegrette materialized on a poster for the Théâtre de Lorient and then made its way to the cover of Bjork’s DVD “Volumen,” where it finally struck the right chord. This progression is not irrelevant — not for them anyway. “An image never interests us as such,” reads M/M’s mission statement. “Its relevance lies in the fact that it contains the sum of preceding dialogues, stories, experiences with various interlocutors and the fact that it induces a questioning of these pre-existing values. A good image should be in between two others, a previous one and another to come.”
To create the font Cesar, they commissioned a small child who did not know how to write to draw the alphabet. Each of the resulting 26 cryptic scribbles corresponds to a different letter. (When asked to contribute to the design of a cafe on the rue Ãtienne Marcel, they incorporated this decorative font into the pattern on the carpet. Unbeknown to most diners, there is an entire text encrypted on the floor.) Yet another alphabet of theirs is carved out of portraits that van Lamsweerde and Matadin took of 26 models. Ann-Catherine becomes the A, Bridget the B and so on all the way to Zoe.
It is difficult to discern whether M/M’s philosophy is an honest, logical expression of their interest in the creative process or merely a defiant effort to assert their own importance. “They have a unique signature,” says Nicolas Ghesquière, who has worked with them since his second season as creative director for Balenciaga. The designer Stella McCartney is another satisfied client. “They bring a fresh eye to the advertising campaigns, and they understand who I am and the DNA of the brand.” But there are those who when they look at M/M’s work see nothing but the designers’ fingerprints, who say that the only ideas that they are interested in communicating are their own. “But these were people who weren’t working with us who were saying this,” Amzalag is quick to point out. “When you are going to work with us, be aware that you are working with two personalities — two individuals,” Augustyniak says. “That doesn’t mean that something won’t be conveyed, but accept that it will have a level of distortion.”
Nowhere was this level of distortion more evident than in the show at the Palais de Tokyo. What was originally conceived as two separate exhibitions — one of the contemporary art collection of a prominent Greek collector, the other an M/M (Paris) retrospective — evolved into “Translation,” which is described in the accompanying limited-edition catalog as “a visual trip operated and articulated by M/M (Paris) with the Dakis Joannou collection.” In the Palais de Tokyo’s sprawling industrial galleries, well-known pieces by Jeff Koons, Maurizio Cattelan, Chris Ofili and Mike Kelley duked it out with advertising images for Calvin Klein Jeans, Balenciaga invitations and a trove of posters created by M/M (Paris) for various Théâtre de Lorient productions. The artist Yinka Shonibare’s piece, “Dressing Down,” was installed upon a variation of the Café Étienne Marcel carpeting, in a room lined with frenetic M/M-designed wallpaper, while the title for Kara Walker’s “Being the True Account of the Life of N,” writ extra large in the model alphabet, threatened to overtake the artwork itself. However visually stunning, the raucous installation often seemed less like a dialogue and more like a shouting match, with M/M apparently winning. “An art collection,” M/M explained, “is an individual’s chance to write their own story using art. In our way of working over the past 10 years, we have also collected little stories. When someone asks us to do an exhibition, it’s the opportunity for us to de-archive and re-edit all those microhistories.”
And how did the art world receive this creative intervention? “They still don’t want to talk about it,” Augustyniak says.
Their solo show in London caused a similar sensation. Titled “Haunch of Venison/Venison of Haunch,” M/M (Paris) created a visual identity for the gallery, which has been open since only 2002, reflected in the mirror of their own experience. In other words, a portrait of the gallery but also a self-portrait. “It’s not like we are graphic designers and suddenly decided to become artists,” they insist. But the approach, they say, made both people from the art world uncomfortable and people from the design world uncomfortable. This, we are meant to understand, was a good thing.
Recently, Hans Ulrich Obrist commissioned M/M (Paris) to create a Web site for the Serpentine Gallery, where he is now a director. The Serpentine already has a perfectly functional if totally unremarkable Web site, with a nice picture of the gallery in its bucolic setting in Kensington Gardens, and useful information about opening hours and future exhibitions. “There is no one better to do this,” Obrist exclaims, “because we knew that they would never want to design a Web site. So what would it be? An anti-Web site? An invisible Web site?” In answering his own questions, Obrist veers off into a tangent about quantum physics, and suddenly he is no longer talking about a Web site as we — or for that matter even Craig Newmark — know it, but a virtual art institution, an entire parallel world unto itself. If you click a button on the Serpentine Web site, you can see the M/M work in progress. It is a fat, squiggly animated line that emerges and disappears in an endless loop — a serpent eating its own tail.
Sources: http://www.thamesandhudson.com/M_to_M_of_M_M_Paris_/9780500289938
http://showstudio.com/contributor/m_m_paris
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/magazine/03Style-paris-t.html?pagewanted=all
Exhibitions
Since 1996 they have extended their practice through art exhibitions; and have been featured in numerous group shows Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum(New York) and Centre Pompidou (Paris).[18] As artists, they are currently represented by Air de Paris in Paris.[19]
List of monographic exhibitions[19]:
2011
Un grand serpent chromé, Les Silos, Chaumont
2009
Un mot d'amour dans une chambre d'écho, Akbank Sanat, Istambul
2008
Vision tenace, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Just Like An Ant Walking On The Edge Of The Visible (catalogue available); Drawing Center, New York
L’Île au Trésor, Galerie Air de Paris, Paris
The Theatre Posters (catalogue available); ggg — Ginza Graphic Gallery, Tokyo
2006
Antigone Under Hypnosis, Paris Calling, V&A, London
Haunch of Venison/Venison of Haunch, (catalogue available); Haunch of Venison, London
2005
Utopia of Flows; Air de Paris/Art Positions, Art Basel, Miami Beach
Zugabe!; Kunstverein, Frankfurt
2004
Antigula (catalogue available); Ursula Blicke Foundation, Kraichtal
Antigone in Asia; Rocket Gallery, Tokyo
Antigone en Yvelines; cneai, Chatou
2003
Nine Posters and a Wallpaper; Le Rectangle, Lyon
Icônes, Indices, Symboles (catalogue available); Festival de Chaumont, Chapelle des Jesuites, Chaumont
M/M goes to Tokyo; Rocket Gallery, Tokyo
1999
M/M; Y-1, Stockholm.
1996
M/M, une exposition; Le Consortium, Dijon.
List of monographic exhibitions[19]:
2011
Un grand serpent chromé, Les Silos, Chaumont
2009
Un mot d'amour dans une chambre d'écho, Akbank Sanat, Istambul
2008
Vision tenace, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Just Like An Ant Walking On The Edge Of The Visible (catalogue available); Drawing Center, New York
L’Île au Trésor, Galerie Air de Paris, Paris
The Theatre Posters (catalogue available); ggg — Ginza Graphic Gallery, Tokyo
2006
Antigone Under Hypnosis, Paris Calling, V&A, London
Haunch of Venison/Venison of Haunch, (catalogue available); Haunch of Venison, London
2005
Utopia of Flows; Air de Paris/Art Positions, Art Basel, Miami Beach
Zugabe!; Kunstverein, Frankfurt
2004
Antigula (catalogue available); Ursula Blicke Foundation, Kraichtal
Antigone in Asia; Rocket Gallery, Tokyo
Antigone en Yvelines; cneai, Chatou
2003
Nine Posters and a Wallpaper; Le Rectangle, Lyon
Icônes, Indices, Symboles (catalogue available); Festival de Chaumont, Chapelle des Jesuites, Chaumont
M/M goes to Tokyo; Rocket Gallery, Tokyo
1999
M/M; Y-1, Stockholm.
1996
M/M, une exposition; Le Consortium, Dijon.
Fun Facts
M#1. The name M/M (Paris) is pronounced em-em-paree. It is commonly mispronounced as eminem, like the American rap artist.
M#2. Michael and Mathias met as students at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris. “It was the first day of school…we ended up having a very long and intense conversation in the courtyard. We quickly decided that we wanted to work together”, Michael recalls.
M#3. Michael and Mathias have worked from their studio in the 10th arrondissement in Paris for the past 15 years. It has no windows, only a big skylight; Mathias describes it as “a place for contemplation”. Before this, the pair worked in a small room in Michael’s father’s dental practice.
M#4. Mathias is an Aries, Michael is a Gemini – a perfect astrological balance.
M#5. The duo describe their work as a conversation. “An image never interests us as such. Its relevance lies in the fact that it contains the sum of preceding dialogues, stories, experiences with various interlocutors, and the fact that it induces a questioning of these pre-existing values. This is what makes for us a pertinent image. A good image should be in between two others, a previous one and another to come.”
M#6. M/M (Paris) created an avatar called The Agent, a simple figure symbol which first debuted in 1999.
M#7. M/M (Paris) made postcards from the beginning of their career, two or three times a year. They stopped only when the printer that they used retired in the early 2000s.
M#8. Key leitmotifs of M/M (Paris) work include alphabets, vibrant colours, hand drawn illustrations, collage, layers, symbols and characters. Their iconic dessin dans l’image (or “drawings in the picture”) debuted in the Yohji Yamamoto spring/summer 1999 catalogue.
M#9. Michael and Mathias are charming, generous and enthusiastic about every project they undertake. This is reflected by the number of longstanding collaborators in the M/M (Paris) family.
M#10. “Their world is like a labyrinth and there’s always a new path. You don’t know where you’re going, but it takes you to another world”, explains Balenciaga’s Nicolas Ghesquière.
M#11. M/M (Paris) designed the cover of Jefferson Hack’s curated album SX 70 for Colette.
M#12. Thames & Hudson first approached M/M (Paris) to do the book 12 years ago. The most time-consuming aspect was the captioning of each of the works.
M#13. The book’s cover features double-exposure test polaroids of the pair by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin during their shoot for Etienne Daho’s Corps & Armes album cover in 2000.
M#14. Despite its 528 pages, the book is incredibly light as a result of its soft cover and delicate paper stock.
M#15. The book was designed by Graphic Thought Facility. “They are good friends of ours and we trust them”, Michael explains. “We’ve always been close even though our work is very different. When we were approached to do the book, it took as a while to convince Thames & Hudson that we didn’t want to design the book ourselves; we are too close to the work. It was important for us to put ourselves in the position that we have put so many other artists – what it feels like to put our work in the hands of someone else.”
M#16. The order of the book is unusual and deeply engaging. Rather than documenting their work in chronological order, the book takes its reader through in-depth conversations with key collaborators and accompanying works, followed by an alphabetical arrangement (ending in M). Editor Emily King interviews Michael and Mathias separately for the start and end. Credits and acknowledgements feature in the well.
M#18. M/M (Paris) have embraced social media, communicating to their worldwide audience via twitter and facebook. #modern
M#19. The M/M (Paris) website is beautiful in its simplicity, reminscent of the early Apple Mac interface circa 1984.
source: http://lordbrummell.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/mm-paris-michael-amzalagmathias-augustyniak/
M#2. Michael and Mathias met as students at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris. “It was the first day of school…we ended up having a very long and intense conversation in the courtyard. We quickly decided that we wanted to work together”, Michael recalls.
M#3. Michael and Mathias have worked from their studio in the 10th arrondissement in Paris for the past 15 years. It has no windows, only a big skylight; Mathias describes it as “a place for contemplation”. Before this, the pair worked in a small room in Michael’s father’s dental practice.
M#4. Mathias is an Aries, Michael is a Gemini – a perfect astrological balance.
M#5. The duo describe their work as a conversation. “An image never interests us as such. Its relevance lies in the fact that it contains the sum of preceding dialogues, stories, experiences with various interlocutors, and the fact that it induces a questioning of these pre-existing values. This is what makes for us a pertinent image. A good image should be in between two others, a previous one and another to come.”
M#6. M/M (Paris) created an avatar called The Agent, a simple figure symbol which first debuted in 1999.
M#7. M/M (Paris) made postcards from the beginning of their career, two or three times a year. They stopped only when the printer that they used retired in the early 2000s.
M#8. Key leitmotifs of M/M (Paris) work include alphabets, vibrant colours, hand drawn illustrations, collage, layers, symbols and characters. Their iconic dessin dans l’image (or “drawings in the picture”) debuted in the Yohji Yamamoto spring/summer 1999 catalogue.
M#9. Michael and Mathias are charming, generous and enthusiastic about every project they undertake. This is reflected by the number of longstanding collaborators in the M/M (Paris) family.
M#10. “Their world is like a labyrinth and there’s always a new path. You don’t know where you’re going, but it takes you to another world”, explains Balenciaga’s Nicolas Ghesquière.
M#11. M/M (Paris) designed the cover of Jefferson Hack’s curated album SX 70 for Colette.
M#12. Thames & Hudson first approached M/M (Paris) to do the book 12 years ago. The most time-consuming aspect was the captioning of each of the works.
M#13. The book’s cover features double-exposure test polaroids of the pair by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin during their shoot for Etienne Daho’s Corps & Armes album cover in 2000.
M#14. Despite its 528 pages, the book is incredibly light as a result of its soft cover and delicate paper stock.
M#15. The book was designed by Graphic Thought Facility. “They are good friends of ours and we trust them”, Michael explains. “We’ve always been close even though our work is very different. When we were approached to do the book, it took as a while to convince Thames & Hudson that we didn’t want to design the book ourselves; we are too close to the work. It was important for us to put ourselves in the position that we have put so many other artists – what it feels like to put our work in the hands of someone else.”
M#16. The order of the book is unusual and deeply engaging. Rather than documenting their work in chronological order, the book takes its reader through in-depth conversations with key collaborators and accompanying works, followed by an alphabetical arrangement (ending in M). Editor Emily King interviews Michael and Mathias separately for the start and end. Credits and acknowledgements feature in the well.
M#18. M/M (Paris) have embraced social media, communicating to their worldwide audience via twitter and facebook. #modern
M#19. The M/M (Paris) website is beautiful in its simplicity, reminscent of the early Apple Mac interface circa 1984.
source: http://lordbrummell.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/mm-paris-michael-amzalagmathias-augustyniak/
The Parisian Graphic Design Duo Celebrate Twenty Years of Visual AlchemyAn illustrated duck on a Björk album cover, a typeface dedicated to Carine Roitfeld and bit-character humanoids populating a deconsecrated chapel feature in this series from two of the most acclaimed creatives of their generation, Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak, better known as M/M (Paris). Since crossing paths at Paris's Les Arts Décoratifs school, the pair have worked as graphic designers and art directors on distinctive fashion, art and music projects incorporating unconventional typography, print, illustration, photography, film, objects and interior design. Envisioning their commissions as “conversations,” M/M (Paris) have collaborated with the likes of photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and Mert and Marcus, and designers Riccardo Tisci, Nicolas Ghesquière and Yohji Yamamoto. Invited by Thames & Hudson to produce a monograph of their oeuvre some 12 years ago, the pair have finally collated their trailblazing imagery into a definitive 528-page softback, designed by Graphic Thought Facility, that includes dialogue with close collaborators alongside hundreds of illustrations. “You can't design a book for your own work because it becomes too self-centered,” explains Amzalag. “It was important for us to put ourselves in the position that we have put so many others in—what it feels like to put our work in the hands of someone else.” Ahead of their 20th anniversary, M/M reveal the secrets behind their innovations.
On establishing collaborations…
Michael: Most of our relationships have happened organically. Riccardo Tisci came to the studio to buy some of our posters as he really liked our work. I lived near Nicolas Ghesquière before he was working at Balenciaga. A friend introduced us to Yohji Yamamoto. We met Inez and Vinoodh at an A.P.C. party in Paris and clicked straight away.
On translating an artist's message…
Mathias: We think of all of our collaborators as artists. They all have something they want to communicate visually. Each collaboration is about understanding an individual and working out how to communicate their world, in a graphic sense. The work we've done for Björk is a succession of portraits—she's a transformative character.
On their love of alphabets…
Mathias: We have always thought of our work as a series of signs and from the beginning we decided that we wanted to create our own “language” so people would immediately be able to recognize our work. Our own typefaces allow us to create our own language; each letter carries meaning. Our own alphabets form part of our collection of tools.
On their working dynamic...
Michael: Oliver Zahm came up with the perfect metaphor for our working relationship. He said one is the bone, the other is the muscle. To me, it's the most accurate description of how we work.
M to M of M/M (Paris) is published by Thames & Hudson in October. Their exhibition Carpetalogue, 1992-2012 runs at Gallery Libby Sellers from October 10–December 15, 2012.
Source: http://www.nowness.com/day/2012/9/20/2444/m-to-m-of-mm-paris
On establishing collaborations…
Michael: Most of our relationships have happened organically. Riccardo Tisci came to the studio to buy some of our posters as he really liked our work. I lived near Nicolas Ghesquière before he was working at Balenciaga. A friend introduced us to Yohji Yamamoto. We met Inez and Vinoodh at an A.P.C. party in Paris and clicked straight away.
On translating an artist's message…
Mathias: We think of all of our collaborators as artists. They all have something they want to communicate visually. Each collaboration is about understanding an individual and working out how to communicate their world, in a graphic sense. The work we've done for Björk is a succession of portraits—she's a transformative character.
On their love of alphabets…
Mathias: We have always thought of our work as a series of signs and from the beginning we decided that we wanted to create our own “language” so people would immediately be able to recognize our work. Our own typefaces allow us to create our own language; each letter carries meaning. Our own alphabets form part of our collection of tools.
On their working dynamic...
Michael: Oliver Zahm came up with the perfect metaphor for our working relationship. He said one is the bone, the other is the muscle. To me, it's the most accurate description of how we work.
M to M of M/M (Paris) is published by Thames & Hudson in October. Their exhibition Carpetalogue, 1992-2012 runs at Gallery Libby Sellers from October 10–December 15, 2012.
Source: http://www.nowness.com/day/2012/9/20/2444/m-to-m-of-mm-paris
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Parisian studio M/M, and coinciding with the publication of the book M to M M/M (Paris), London'sGallery Libby Sellers commissioned a series of rugs for the exhibition The Carpetologue, which will runs through 15 December.
Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak — who describe themselves as "a factory of images and meaning" — established M/M (Paris) in 1992 as a graphic design practice. Through their ongoing collaboration with the world of music (with artists like Madonna and Björk), fashion (Yohji Yamamoto was one of the studio's first clients, followed by the likes of Balenciaga, Givenchy and Stella McCarthy) and contemporary art (clients include Philippe Parremo and Pierre Huyghe as well as institutions such as Tate Modern and the Pompidou Centre in Paris), they have built up a multiple, complex and diversified identity that has earned them a prominent place in 21st century graphic design.
The window onto the street of the London gallery, where passionate and ambitious projects are always shown, presents an image that has characterised the studio for many years: the two designers with television-screen heads, which represents a metaphor for M/M's approach, a collaboration between the two with the world outside. They appear on one of four carpets — all hand-made in Varanasi, India — and refer to a hypothetical cover for an imaginary catalogue of the work of M/M.
Another carpet continues the idea of a page/carpet that combines an illustrative design created for Givenchy — an abstract photograph set against a pixelated background — whose contrast highlights the way that M/M combine a strongly digital spirit with another linked to illustrative images in the form of pencil drawings. The third carpet is an exact reproduction of a page of notes, sketches and visual annotations in which the pair appear again with other classic images from the studio's repertoire. The series of carpets concludes with a large eye that symbolises the invincibility of Japan, made as a contribution to Designers for Japan Relief, a fund-raising initiative in response to the 2011 tsunami.
The rugs by M/M (Paris) combine the ability to create free and imaginary shapes — first drawn by hand and then reproduced digitally — with rigorous geometric compositions, the leitmotif of the studio's work. They make up a limited edition of 12 pieces displayed on coloured wooden stands. While providing the backdrop to the exhibition and therefore serving a very specific function, these stands bring to mind the tables designed for a graphic design exhibition at the Triennale in Milan.
The opening of The Carpetologue exhibition has also offered an opportunity to present in London the extensive catalogue bringing together — through the association of images rather than in chronological order — the work of Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak. Published in the United Kingdom by Thames & Hudson, M to M of M/M (Paris) is edited by Emily King, and includes a preface by Hans Ulrich Obrist. The volume features a portrait of one half of M/M (Paris) on the front cover, and the other on the back. Both meet up at the centre of the book, as if to reflect not only on Amzalag and Augustyniak's past work, but also their approach to working together — something they have always given much consideration to. Maria Cristina Didero
Source: http://www.domusweb.it/en/design/mm-paris-the-carpetalogue-/
ll invitations produced by the studio for haute couture and RTW collections by Givenchy.
The third volume from the collection of M/M (Paris) assembles all the invitations the studio has produced for Givenchy in the past 5 years in collaboration with Riccardo Tisci.
Season after season, Mathias Augustiniak and Michaël Amzalag have created for Givenchy's artistic director Riccardo Tisci strong and unique images for his show invitations, both luxurious and artistic. Through thirty-two invitations for the Women's, Men's and Haute Couture collections, the publication displays one of the latest and most creative collaborations of the M/M (Paris) studio, revealing uncommon artistry in the current world of fashion images.
Marked by M/M (Paris)' well-known signature that includes the superimposition of hand-drawn figures, photography and designs, they also present the various innovative formats that the designers have chosen to use; from double-sided posters, to stamps, stickers, cut-out masks or bracelets.
As an enthusiastic collector of those invitations, Olivier Zahm has been invited to write an introduction that reflects on this happening in fashion imagery.
“These elegant invitations, dark, tortured, mysterious, erotic, surrealistic, are a sort of thumbing of the nose at current fashion images.” – Olivier Zahm
Limited edition of numbered 1500 copies.
M/M (Paris) is a creative partnership between Mathias Augustyniak (born 1967 in Cavaillon) and Michael Amzalag (born 1968 in Paris), founded in 1992. Working within the framework of language and design, they practice across many cultural fields. Unfettered by the structures of disciplinary boundaries, these self-described artists perceive their professional title to be Strategic Creative Directors. From their Parisian studio, M/M has worked and developed strong relationships with musicians (Björk, Madonna, Jean-Louis Murat...); contemporary artists (Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, Sarah Morris, Gabriela Fridriksdottir,François Curlet, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster...); fashion designers (Yohji Yamamoto, Jil Sander, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Stella McCartney…); and magazines (Vogue Paris, i-D, Purple Fashion, Arena Homme+, Interview,Frog, eDEN, Stream, Documents sur l'art...); and with cultural institutions (Palais de Tokyo, Musée d'Art Moderne and Centre Pompidou in Paris, Le Consortium in Dijon, The Desde Foundation in Athens, the Serpentine Gallery in London…).source: http://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=2534&menu=
The third volume from the collection of M/M (Paris) assembles all the invitations the studio has produced for Givenchy in the past 5 years in collaboration with Riccardo Tisci.
Season after season, Mathias Augustiniak and Michaël Amzalag have created for Givenchy's artistic director Riccardo Tisci strong and unique images for his show invitations, both luxurious and artistic. Through thirty-two invitations for the Women's, Men's and Haute Couture collections, the publication displays one of the latest and most creative collaborations of the M/M (Paris) studio, revealing uncommon artistry in the current world of fashion images.
Marked by M/M (Paris)' well-known signature that includes the superimposition of hand-drawn figures, photography and designs, they also present the various innovative formats that the designers have chosen to use; from double-sided posters, to stamps, stickers, cut-out masks or bracelets.
As an enthusiastic collector of those invitations, Olivier Zahm has been invited to write an introduction that reflects on this happening in fashion imagery.
“These elegant invitations, dark, tortured, mysterious, erotic, surrealistic, are a sort of thumbing of the nose at current fashion images.” – Olivier Zahm
Limited edition of numbered 1500 copies.
M/M (Paris) is a creative partnership between Mathias Augustyniak (born 1967 in Cavaillon) and Michael Amzalag (born 1968 in Paris), founded in 1992. Working within the framework of language and design, they practice across many cultural fields. Unfettered by the structures of disciplinary boundaries, these self-described artists perceive their professional title to be Strategic Creative Directors. From their Parisian studio, M/M has worked and developed strong relationships with musicians (Björk, Madonna, Jean-Louis Murat...); contemporary artists (Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, Sarah Morris, Gabriela Fridriksdottir,François Curlet, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster...); fashion designers (Yohji Yamamoto, Jil Sander, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Stella McCartney…); and magazines (Vogue Paris, i-D, Purple Fashion, Arena Homme+, Interview,Frog, eDEN, Stream, Documents sur l'art...); and with cultural institutions (Palais de Tokyo, Musée d'Art Moderne and Centre Pompidou in Paris, Le Consortium in Dijon, The Desde Foundation in Athens, the Serpentine Gallery in London…).source: http://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=2534&menu=
Book
A 528-page monograph - conceived as a reschuffled alphabetical dictionary that starts with the letter 'M' on page 311 - that presents for the first time twenty years of works by M/M (Paris), one of the most emblematic and influential design practices and art partnerships of the twenty-first century. Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak originally established M/M (Paris) as a graphic design studio in 1992. Their close associations with the music, fashion and art worldshave led to their becoming one of the most distinctive and acclaimed creative voices of their generation, within graphic design and beyond. Published to mark their twentieth anniversary, this is the definitive monograph. It records hundreds of their mind-blowing projects, each represented in illustrations and photographs and arranged alphabetically from 'M' to 'M'. While print, drawing, photography and an unconventional approach to typography lie at the heart of M/M's work, they have also produced films, objects or interiors. 'Our work is about expressing the idea of a dialogue. We transfer elements from fashion to music to art and back again, and keep using different mediums,' they explain. Each work they produce is unique, but certain elements recur and reverberate - leitmotifs that drawtheir output, despite its range, into a unified whole. The monograph features collaborations with the finest from a spectrum of creative worlds, including fashion works with the likes of Balenciaga, Calvin Klein, Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs and Yohji Yamamoto; music works with Benjamin Biolay, Bjork, Kanye West and Madonna; magazines such as Vogue Paris, Arena Homme+ or Interview; art projects and exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern and Guggenheim Museum. Interviews with some of their closest collaborators -- such as Bjork, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Pierre Huyghe, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Sarah Morris or Glenn O'Brien, as well as Amzalag and Augustyniak themselves, tell M/M's story. These texts reveal their areas of interest, define their position both within graphic design and beyond and shed new light on the duo's creative process. Internationally renowned art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist contributes a preface, while contemporary artist Philippe Parreno offers an essay about their joint projects. These multiple conversations and recollections of shared experiences paint an overview of the evolution of the creative world since the early 90s. This ambitious monograph is a rare document and unparalleled insight into the work and minds of Europe's most thoughtful and influential image-makers.
source: http://www.amazon.ca/M-Paris/dp/050028993X
source: http://www.amazon.ca/M-Paris/dp/050028993X