Vrroom, vrroom!– we’re off to discover Marie Assénat’s fun and colorful world!

Bonjour, Mes Amis. If you’re in the mood for big smiles, you’ve come to the right place. 

Marie’s a Parisian illustrator currently based in Brooklyn. Her distinctive style is all about simple lines, bold colors, lots of quirk, and a certain je ne sais quoi that’s absolutely irresistible. So charming, so French!

It was while studying graphic design at La Cambre in Brussels that Marie discovered her love of illustration. In her last year of art school, her instructor showed her work to a publisher, and that led to her first children’s book.

In addition to books, she’s worked on many commercial and editorial projects, with clients such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Hermes, Google, Warby Parker, Financial Times UK, and Tiffany & Co. Japan.

She creates her delightful pictures with brushes and gouache, ink, colored pencils, and a touch of Photoshop (for adding quick color). She enjoys drawing lots of separate elements and then gathering them together on the computer, making her work especially suitable for clothing pattern design and packaging.

I especially love her work for Le Chocolats des Français. Could there be a better project than designing art for candy bars?!

Growing up in Paris awakened Marie’s “artistic sense.” She frequented art exhibitions and the ballet thanks to her mother and grandmother, and developed an appreciation for classical music and old movies from her father, who’s a photographer.

I was born surrounded by nice images and good taste so it was super easy for me to follow that path.

Early influences include Babar, Tove Jansson, Paul Cox, Tomi Ungerer’s children’s books, Matisse collages, David Hockney drawings, Basquiat.

Marie gathers inspiration from browsing Pinterest, Instagram, and tumblr. She likes finding old photos from the 30s and 60s; she gets good ideas from all the fun hairstyles and fashion. 

Enjoy this trailer for the animation project she did for Tiffany & Co. Japan, called “Hand Meets Hand.” She made hundreds of small drawings which were then animated by the ad agency Hakuhodo for an installation at Tiffany’s Ginza store in Tokyo. So sweet!

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Don’t you feel lighter and more refreshed? 🙂

For lots more Marie:
Official Website |  Instagram  |  tumblr

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*Copyright © 2022 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.