MODEM DESIGN Milano April 2013

“CARTE BLANCHE” 2013 TO... H5 January 2013… For this Modem edition we gave "carte blanche" to H5 collective, a multidisciplinary communication agency known for its ability in playing, using and twisting contemporary graphic codes. From 1996 to 2006 , H5 was part of the rising of “French Touch” music phenomenon making its most important hit’s covers: Solid, Source, 20000 ST, Missive, Pamplemousse... H5 built its new vocabulary retrieving images from shop windows, supermarkets shelves to graphic design “garbage” (advertising, business communications, textbooks, corporate books…) preferring those amateur, daily and ordinary images to professional ones. Like Pop Art sons, or better said nephews, they widen Warhols reasearch to the next step, going from the seizure of consumers use goods to the manipolation of contemporary communication tools. In 1999, in the video clip “The Child” realized for Alex Gopher , H5 images a city where every object is shaped from its word, making a legendary New York vision. From that moment on, H5 enters the luxury world ( Dior, Hermes, Kenzo, Cartier ,…), the institutions one ( Cannes festival, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais…), and the advertising one ( Audi, Citroen, Toyota, Smart, ..). As an unusual thing for that time, many bands like Massive Attack, Goldfrapp, Playground, Superfurry Animals ask H5 to make their videos; The Royksopp 2002 “Remind Me” video is already set in video-making history. In 2012, Gaîté Lyrique in Paris welcomed 'HELLO™ H5' exhibition, a manifesto where their thoughts on marketing and society are expressed. www.h5.fr Editorial Committee of Modem Design