LWLies Six­ties Presents… Play­time reimagined

LWLies Six­ties is part of #99DaysOfDesign, from 99designs by Vistaprint. Check out all the posters in the series and dis­cov­er more at 99de​signs​.com

In order to make Play­time, French film­mak­er Jacques Tati cre­at­ed a hand­made metrop­o­lis in the sub­urbs of Paris that became known as ​“Tativille”. The film itself is an aston­ish­ing feat of pro­duc­tion and set design in which Tati’s on-screen avatar Mon­sieur Hulot nav­i­gates a dis­ori­ent­ing urban land­scape of clank­ing machin­ery and nev­er-end­ing traf­fic jams.

Despite pre­sent­ing a rather gloomy vision of con­tem­po­rary city liv­ing, with all its bureau­crat­ic appa­ra­tus and util­i­tar­i­an archi­tec­ture, Play­time is above all a work of light-heart­ed com­ic genius. Burst­ing with visu­al humour and inven­tive­ness in every frame, it stands as one of the most fre­quent­ly imi­tat­ed – but nev­er bet­tered – films ever made.

Cap­ping off our part­ner­ship with 99 Days of Design, a cel­e­bra­tion of the pow­er of design from 99designs by Vistaprint, LWLies Art Direc­tor Lau­rène Boglio has put a play­ful spin on this endur­ing ​’60s mas­ter­piece, chan­nelling her love for peri­od design and all things Tati.

“I often feel like Mon­sieur Hulot in my day-to-day life and can, there­fore, relate to his expe­ri­ences through­out Play­time,” says Boglio when speak­ing about how she approached her design. ​“I love Jacque Tati’s crit­i­cal vision of mod­ern life-turned-eerie circus.

“I used a Pen­rose tri­an­gle and MC Escher’s sur­re­al­ist archi­tec­ture to place char­ac­ters in an impos­si­ble schema. While Mon­sieur Hulot is pic­tured at the cen­tre of the machine, he is the one oper­at­ing it – draw­ing the audience’s atten­tion to the ridicu­lous nature of the system.”

Look back over all six LWLies Six­ties posters and dis­cov­er more about 99designs by Vistaprint at 99de​signs​.com