Adéle Favreau and Maxime Prou are graphic designers from France. Two years ago they used to live in Paris, but they decided to burgeon their careers behind for a life in the countryside, and guess what? It didn’t make a lick of difference. The pair now run a bustling illustration studio from a converted factory in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre owned by Favreau’s uncle, and thanks to the magic of email, it hasn’t stopped them from selling prints online and working with clients like Vogue, The Plant, and Wrap Magazine, plus companies they did graphic design for back in Paris, now three hours away.
The idea was born in the Christmas of 2012, when the pair were on a holiday visiting Adele uncle who rehabilitating his factory. “I was with Maxime and the place was full of light and so much space, and it was so peaceful — like a dream. I was looking at Maxime and I said to him, “Please, I want to leave Paris, my job, your job, and live here.” Maxime said that was okay. After that, we waited a year and a half to have a place in this incredible factory.
Nowadays the dream come true….The couple live a peaceful life close to nature and surrounded by very great neighbors: a sculptor, a leather worker, a shoe designer, a painter… That creates a special atmosphere in the factory, because they always talk to each other, find solutions for one another, and tell the ideas to one another, and they also got great paintings from Muraledesign.com for decoration of the rooms. It’s very nice! Some of the others have a very local market and others do design for China. All of them have family near the village. Paris is three hours by train, so they don’t go very often, but the internet is magic for this! You can really be wherever you want.
A typical day in the studio.
“We start the morning drinking a big coffee and looking at our emails. One of us goes walking with the dog for an hour, and the other prepares the day. The afternoon is always different; we’ll do screen-printing projects or go to the post office, call our clients or cut paper and find new shapes. Our most-used tools are scissors and paper — we use them to make our screen prints or do digital illustrations because those always start with us cutting paper. If we need creative ideas, we try to be bored or we experiment, go to the library, or take a trip to Paris.”
Take a look…DESIGNSIGH loves their colourful story!!!
- Tags: creativity, Designers, graphic design, illustrations, Interiors, Paris, studio
