MM Paris founded in 1992 by Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag and made famous by their artistic direction and collaboration within fashion and music industry. Residing in gay paree MM Paris have worked alongside such artists as Mew, Madonna and Bjork in the music industry as well as Stella McCartney, Vogue and Calvin Klein within the Fashion Industry.
Originally influenced by Swiss Graphic Design and Post Punk Aesthetics, MM Paris brings together an intense mix of illustration and photography. Leaving an obvious mark on a perfect picture. These collage style designs are basically defacing the corporate hold on the fashion world and providing an edge, and edge that cannot be provided by a photograph alone. I'm not trying to say that mixing photography with hand rendered design has not been done before, I'm saying that MM Paris are doing it with style. They have to be doing something right don't they?
M/M Paris
'No Ghost Just a Shell'
2000
'No Ghost Just a Shell' is a particular favourite of mine, the far out mixture of anime style illustration, stencil typography, hand drawn 3D's and that over printed look provide a platform for this stab at a corporate identity.
Whether we like it or not, as soon as we approach a photograph with any other media we're ripping the back out of MM Paris and many other designers that pre-date them, although we like to call it "inspiration". Then again, you could look at the designers MM Paris have taken "inspiration" from...
Post Punk design was the fore front for mixing medias and defacing digital imagery but prior to this the ball had already started rolling with the punk era playing host to the use of collage as a main design method. Jamie Reid made his contributions in 1977 by covering a monochromatic Queen's mouth and eyes with slashed newspaper clippings for the Sex Pistol's Single 'God save the Queen'.
With this is mind M/M took a good look at Swiss design and created a combination of the two, taking type from one and methods from the other and resulting in what we see today. This is the design that paved the foot path for such design groups as 'Non Format'...
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