2024-08-12 09:42:33
For the summer season, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac reinvents the traditional bottle of 1664 BLANC. He adds a pop touch, his strong colors, blue, green, yellow, as well as pink. The slogan, “la french” is diverted and becomes: “la french Touch”. The creator Jean-Charles de Castelbajac looks back on this collaboration.
What do you want to show from 1664?
Throughout my life as a creator and since my collaborations during the 80s, I have imagined concepts that aim to bring simple elements to life together with pop elements. I intend to create images and ideas that bring people together, that participate in the march of the world, with a friendly tone.
Have you encountered any difficulties?
When I was offered this collaboration, I accepted but I wanted them to respect my color and visual codes, as well as my vision. The industrial chain could have been a difficulty, but it really wasn’t. I wanted the capsules on the bottles to be multi-colored tokens, which implies a transformation of the production circuit. My wishes were followed.
What is the message of this logo and this design?
The 1664 beer was founded at the time of Louis XIV. It touched me. It’s beautiful, yet we don’t talk about it enough. It’s not just a number, it’s an important date in the history of France, hence the presence of the sun on the logo. Then, 1664 uses the slogan “la french” and I added “la french touch” to rejuvenate the brand.
I wanted there to be camouflage, so I worked on this avalanche of colors, so that it would be communicative and the whole thing would look like me.
What place for color?
Color is a universal language. In a society where everything is branded, where everything is registered, it remains the property of all. “There are no copyrights on the rainbow” Monsignor Lustiger told me during the World Youth Days… Throughout the world, color has meaning and it brings people together. I myself feel a kind of chromatic brotherhood, my language is universal, wherever I go.
I have appreciated colors since I was little. Today I understand it with a science. My range is short and strong. For my exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, I had asked Julien Granel to put my colors and symbols to music, and he succeeded in doing a wonderful job.
With this creation for 1664, did you want to rejuvenate the brand?
When someone entrusts me with a project of this type, my thinking goes through several stages, including considering History; and this is how we can move towards the rebirth of this brand.
It also seems to me that today, it is no longer enough to create logos where only a word and an image are associated. We must create a source of experience, emotion, entertainment, take into account subjects related to ecology, and in consideration of the obligations relating to digital communication. By composing with these elements, we succeed in reinventing, renewing the image and the brand.
I also really enjoy creating a form of art related to marketing and I have no guilt about it. During my exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Center, all the products were for sale, even the smallest bookmark… They were an integral part of the exhibition.
Are you making the iconic 1664 bottle?
I am proud of the reinvention of the logo. I put my primary colors instead of the traditional colors that dress the beer bottle, for more freshness. This made it a collector’s item. And then, I really liked designing the glasses… During this collaboration, I felt free, the agency and 1664 followed me, they gave me carte blanche.
What are you preparing now? What is your future collaboration?
My next collaboration will be in London, for a club, the “Sketch”. I will prepare an exhibition in homage to the suffragettes in this place which was their headquarters. The exhibition will be called “The house of the brave”.
At the moment, and for a few weeks now, a work has been installed on Boulevard Saint-Germain in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, at the level of Square Taras-Chevtchenko. I created a work whose wooden trellis is inspired by the methods used in the 18th century, it is called “Ange géographe” and symbolically, it acts in favor of hope with its relationship to the celestial elements.
By Charlotte Saliou
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