French graphic artist, director.

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"Bardou-Jacquet, represented by Partizan Midi Minuit (with offices in the US, the UK and France) and based in Paris, operates his own graphic design studio, H5, in the same offices as Paris-based record label Solid. He was signed as a director by Partizan in June 1999.

Having dwelled on the idea of using typography and words to convey a more visual meaning for some time, Bardou-Jacquet was first able to implement his concept with a music video for French artist Alex Gopher's song "The Child." Set in New York, the video follows a young couple rushing through the city to reach the hospital to have their baby delivered.

The visual hook? The streets, buildings (the Guggenheim Museum), people and the couple themselves are visually represented by type - the viewer is left able to interpret the meaning of these words.

"For at least three years, I wondered how to make words and typography actually interpret everyday things in a cinematographic way," says Bardou-Jacquet.

When BMP DDB saw the video, the London agency wanted to apply the technique to an ad for client Vodafone. Building around the tag line "the word is Vodafone," Bardou-Jacquet and BMP DDB created a 30-second spot entitled "Word." Set in London, the spot shows a young man hurrying to meet his girlfriend, whom he has forgotten to meet at Heathrow Airport. The characters and all of the environment are composed of text and fonts shaped to resemble what they represent.

"The agency came up with the words for the main characters and for the main story," explains Isabella Parish, the producer on this job at Partizan. "The settings depicted, like Trafalgar Square or the Tower Bridge, were all decided by the agency and myself."

The original storyboard was done in 2D on Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. All of the words comprising the spot were designed in Photoshop before being changed into 3D using Lightwave and Flame.

"For many scenes, the setting would be built up like a 3D map or model of the area, and in this area, the camera could move wherever the director wanted to go," says Bardou-Jacquet.

The job took approximately five weeks to complete, and was done entirely in post-production, with Bardou-Jacquet working with a team of 10 special effects and post personnel. Now that his type-to-visual concept has been used as a promo and reused as an ad, Bardou-Jacquet is anxious to branch out in other directions.

"I am working on a promo, for a French artist, that is half live action and half animation and special effects," says Bardou-Jacquet. "It is set in Paris, and depicts the city crumbling away and reassembling itself."

Bardou-Jacquet has also completed three commercials for the Bank of Scotland." from www.boardsmag.com/articles/magazine/20000101/dirbardou.html

You can view the video here