Paris – Eternal Symmetry

by Mark

Taking the exact same photos like everyone else does not leave me very satisfied. So I started taking pictures of seemingly random things, but they have themes. At least that’s what I tell my self. 🙂

With this collection of Paris images I was assembling themes of infinite, eternal, and symmetry. I found plenty in the Notre Dame cathedral, various museums, and under the cloudy Parisian sidewalks.

Paris – Signs and Symbols

by Mark

This post is mostly about street signs and advertisements in and around Paris. It’s a very much an international city using more iconography over text to communicate information.

I took a lot of pictures of random stuff in Paris that I’ll have to sort through, more to come.

Paris Street Pixel Art

by Karen

I’ve been noticing these on various buildings and walls throughout Paris and have been collecting photos of them. To me, they are like Easter eggs you find as a reward for exploring the city.

Movie Posters in the Paris Metro

by Karen

Having taken the Paris Metro for 2 weeks, I generally see 4 types of billboard ads:
– movie posters
– museum exhibition ads
– telecom ads
– travel ads

What fascinates me is ads for Hollywood movies in French.

Our tour guide last week (from our walking tour) explained that French people don’t view Hollywood movies as a part of American culture, they view it merely as a product they are consuming (i.e., The Avengers is neither an American or Hollywood movie; it is just an Avengers movie). I got into an interesting discussion with Mark about what constitutes as an “American”, “British”, or “French” movie. For example, would Batman Begins be considered British, since a majority of the actors (and the director) are from the UK? Or is the IP so great, that it transcends borders? Conversely, what makes Amélie specifically a French film? Anyway, that’s a topic of discussion for another post 🙂

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that many posters for local French movies though, perhaps I am traveling in the wrong Metro stations.

I am curious, do any of these movie posters look like the ones back in the US?

London – Signs and Beasts

by Mark

Brilliant things to look at in and around London. The area, compared our trips to Iceland or Scotland, has a lot more beasts incorporated into their symbols. Their text-based signs are very similar to the other countries. However, London has more of a tendency to info-cluster bomb people with mosaics of signs.