As a hardcore pop designer, you’ve got to have an appreciation and command over simplicity that must come as a first, or at most second nature. You’ve got to be able to turn difficult to understand concepts and ideas into short, concise depictions. Once a simplified idea reaches its intended audience, the audience takes over and your job is done.* The audience can then take the idea apart and investigate the greater intricacies themselves, thus, the great chain, of life. This process is understood and enforced emphatically by the illustrator of the works you see above and below.

His name is Nicolas Henriot and he rocks the house.

Mister Henriot works closely with Seize Galerie in Marseille, France. This gallery holds entire exhibitions of works that fall under the pop-design definition I just shot at you above. Of course, they’d call it some derivative of pop ART. When the message IS the medium, often the project turns thusly INTO artwork, and is also sold as thus.

Now take a look at this recently completed collection of illustrations. Artwork, pop design, illustration made of a reduced amount of lines. Simplicity, magnificence, excellence.

The people in the illustrations are, in no particular order: Donovan Le, Mona Fabiani, Jose Lamali, Myrtille & Christina, Nicolas Ouvrier, Vinz Crostwo, Marion Biju Duval, Damien Boy, Christophe Guinet, Jeremie Morjane, and Yan San Martin. This collection of illustrations is called “French Connection” and those people are all artists, designers, and fashion icons from or having to do with the social state of France.

Aren’t they all just so completely fabulous looking?

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies headshots category.

*This of course in itself is a simplification of a much larger process, one that never, ever ends. Designer for life, never stop moving, aligning, and shaping.