The art direc­tor who cre­ates humor­ous, intro­spec­tive snap­shots of every­day life

This sto­ry is part of Cre­ative Resilience, an edi­to­r­i­al series pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Square­space.

“When I start­ed mak­ing GIFs, it was basi­cal­ly just a way to talk with my friends, to make jokes,” says Lau­rène Boglio. The Lit­tle White Lies art director’s sub­tle ener­gy has defined the look and feel of the mag­a­zine for the last three years. She doesn’t give too much away about what motors that ener­gy. Until she feels that you are her friend.

“At first I just saw GIFs as these real­ly con­densed lit­tle pieces of sto­ry­telling,” she says, ​“but I soon realised that they were a per­fect tool for me. I am an intro­vert; I don’t spend much time being social, I don’t like talk­ing to strangers. I’m not a depres­sive per­son, it’s just that I’m hap­pi­est when I’m alone and when I’m draw­ing. So it’s eas­i­er for me to share things about myself in this way. Much eas­i­er than doing these things face to face!”

Lau­rène was born and raised in the beau­ti­ful city of Annecy in the French Alps. Nev­er real­ly at home with what she calls ​“all these healthy peo­ple hap­pi­ly run­ning in the fields,” as a teenag­er she went to study at Les Arts Déco­rat­ifs de Stras­bourg before arriv­ing in Lon­don via Paris. Stints at var­i­ous adver­tis­ing agen­cies and design hous­es led to free­lance work cre­at­ing GIFs for plat­forms like TUM­BLR and GIPHY. Once she moved to Lon­don a chance encounter with Lit­tle White Lies led to her cur­rent posi­tion at the cre­ative helm. And for Lau­rène, the jour­ney would have been impos­si­ble with­out being able to get her work out there via the web.

“For some­one who spends so much time on their own, hav­ing a dig­i­tal pres­ence that looks beau­ti­ful and works sim­ply is absolute­ly essen­tial,” she says. ​“It has def­i­nite­ly helped me as an intro­vert, to say things in draw­ings that would be impos­si­ble to say with­out hav­ing an online plat­form…” These tiny slices of sto­ry­telling are per­fect­ly suit­ed to meet the demands of the dig­i­tal age. And much of Laurène’s free­lance work still comes direct­ly from the con­tact tab of her Square­space site. ​“Com­mis­sions that are all about my per­son­al style, the black and white, dark­er stuff, always comes direct from the web­site – and often these devel­op into work for big­ger brands.”

One of the defin­ing things about Lau­rène is that it’s impos­si­ble to pigeon hole her. ​“I think it’s real­ly impor­tant that you don’t allow your­self to be defined by one sin­gle thing, she says. If you can devel­op a range of skills with­in what you do, and then rep­re­sent that, the pos­si­bil­i­ties become much more broad. Unex­pect­ed things will come your way.”

When Tay­lor Swift’s peo­ple com­mis­sioned Lau­rène to pro­duce a series of ani­mat­ed assets for her 2018 world tour, it was some­thing of an irony. ​“Before I worked on the project I didn’t know much about Taylor’s music,” she says. ​“But I love to col­lab­o­rate, and I like it when my work has to fit into a wider picture.”

The brief was to cre­ate ani­mat­ed ban­ners that would rep­re­sent the respec­tive cities on the glob­al sta­di­um tour. ​“Because I am a graph­ic design­er I was real­ly inter­est­ed in what the font was going to be, what the ratio would be of the illus­trat­ed ele­ments to the logo etc. I am used to doing the whole thing, so I was able to bring lay­out and type treat­ments as well as illus­tra­tion and GIFs to the project – and in the end it defined the whole iden­ti­ty for the tour. It was bril­liant to be able to inte­grate my work into what already exist­ed. We had to cre­ate 35 ban­ners for the dif­fer­ent stops in the tour, so it was a real chal­lenge. But my real take­away was that my work could lit­er­al­ly stand up for itself on the world’s stage. And I realised that my dream com­mis­sion hasn’t hap­pened yet. I would love to make a full length ani­mat­ed music video.”

Though she’s still wait­ing for a knock on the door from Gene Sim­mons, dur­ing the recent weeks and months the world has swiv­elled into a space that Lau­rène has always occu­pied. ​“I haven’t been get­ting out for walks any more than usu­al,” she says. ​“I have always walked every­where. I have always loved house plants. I have always spent time at home mak­ing things. Now every­one is doing it!”

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And where the mass­es seem to be switch­ing on to the world of home enter­tain­ment, Lau­rène has typ­i­cal­ly eschewed binge watch­ing on stream­ing ser­vices. ​“I don’t like to fill my head with too much ran­dom stuff,” she says. ​“I like to be real­ly selec­tive and watch films that I can take some­thing from. But occa­sion­al­ly I also like to watch some­thing real­ly trashy, for escapism. I like some­thing a bit ​‘clever’ and some­thing total­ly two dimen­sion­al. I like bad films. They de-stress me.”

There is a sub­tle­ty and brevi­ty to Laurène’s obser­va­tion­al pow­ers that finds the per­fect expres­sion in the lines of the draw­ings she cre­ates. And though there is a tan­gi­ble intro­spec­tion to the way she inter­acts with the world, as a per­son­al­i­ty she is dri­ly hilar­i­ous. Pre­sid­ing over the visu­al char­ac­ter of Lit­tle White Lies makes sense. Her work comes togeth­er with the quick­ness and exac­ti­tude of a true auteur.

“Some­times I think my most suc­cess­ful work is the very small pieces which con­vey some­thing emo­tion­al that hap­pened to me,” she reflects. ​“If, for exam­ple, I get dumped or stood up by some­one, and I’m sit­ting around on my own at home being mis­er­able, I will cre­ate a GIF and send it out into the world – some­thing emerges from the neg­a­tive. I can con­tain all these feel­ings in a series of draw­ings. I can make them live, and then I can send them away. It’s like, ​‘That’s what I felt; that’s what hap­pened; here it is: bye bye!’ It’s com­plete­ly cathar­tic for me.”

There is some­thing very… French… about Lau­rène, though that iden­ti­ty is a com­plex nexus of ele­ments – and when you live away from home, there is anoth­er lay­er. ​“There is a nugget of truth at the heart of every cliché,” she says. ​“French peo­ple love to com­plain about every­thing. I had to live some­where else to realise that this was true of French peo­ple, and myself. We can cre­ate a dra­ma over noth­ing. We love to rumi­nate and to be dif­fi­cult. These ideas don’t come from nothing.”

But have the care­worn clichés of French­ness been an advan­tage or the oppo­site for Lau­rène in her line of work? The jury is still out. ​“I am a visu­al artist. I receive a brief, I send the art­work, so I don’t real­ly have to talk with any­one,” she says. ​“And any­way, I don’t real­ly like talk­ing to strangers. This rein­forces the stereo­type of myself as this ​‘mys­te­ri­ous French­woman’. I don’t wear a beret and dark glass­es, but you know what – I might start! Per­haps I need to be more mysterious!”

Cre­ate a dig­i­tal pres­ence that reflects your visu­al iden­ti­ty. Use the code LWLies to get a dis­count on a new Square­space website.

Read more sto­ries from our series on Cre­ative Resilience, in part­ner­ship with Squarespace.

With thanks to Stéphanie Sergeant for her help on the animations.