Best of Paris: Nothing short of colourful

November 30, 2011 / 1 comment

Best of Paris: Nothing short of colourful

Sorry we’ve been away for a while but that’s because we’ve been to Europe! Our first stop was Paris so we bring you some of the colourful inspirations and ideas that we picked up there.

The Centre Pompidou‘s architecture by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano never fails to inspire us with its clashing elements of exposed pipes, tubes, escalators, elevators and its use of colour. Goes to show that bold is indeed more beautiful.

Centre Pompidou Exterior — Pictures don't do justice to the wow factor of seeing the Centre Pompidou in person.

Within its many gallery spaces, the building also houses one of the best gallery shops in Europe stocking a range of arts, crafts, books and designer objects.

The window display of the Centre Pompidou gallery shop

We picked up these Julian Opie postcards at the gallery shop as we’ve always been a fan of his work, especially his series of portraits with their minimalistic approach where the subject’s face is depicted with very few details and very controlled use of colour. He’s even lent the same approach to an album cover of British band Blur in 2000, illustrating the four band members in the same fashion, proving how the lines between art and commercial design can really blur.

Julie Opie postcards, Paris Wallpaper city guide, Moleskin Paris journal — Some goodies that we picked up in Paris, from left: Moleskin Paris journal, Wallpaper* Paris city guide, Julian Opie postcards, Comme des Garcons wallet.

We also got these pop-up floral cards from the gallery shop, which is no surprise as we’ve previously expressed our appreciation of paper pop-up craft in an earlier post. We think these cards are just perfect as an event invitation or for a press kit for a fashion label to launch their spring collection. You can bet that these cards will stay on the desks of editors and journalists for many springs to come.

Mango floral pop up cards — Assorted cards with pop-up flowers

We’re also smitten by the colourful packaging of these Kusmi tea tins, with their ornate oriental prints on the labels that work very well to reflect the brand’s ancestry of being around since 1867, but also to appeal to new generations of consumers almost hundred and fifty years after.

Kusmi Tea tin packaging — The lovely, old world packaging of these strawberry and chocolate scented tea from Kusmi.

Last but not least, it’s the unexpected surprise that greets you at a wrong turn of a street in Paris that truly shows you that inspiration can be found anywhere, if you know where to look. On a quiet street at Le Marais, we were definitely not expecting to see the below Italian from a popular Nintendo game, made up of coloured tiles and leaping off the wall.