French Artist Behind The Viral Paris Peace Symbol

This is a rare occurrence for the museums and highlights the shape of things to come, including a predicted loss of tourist revenue for the most popular gallery in the world.

Twitter quickly turned into a message board Friday night with information to help people in Paris get to safety.

Photo: Jean Jullien, via Facebook.

He has reacted to other news too, sketching images to mark the massacre at the offices of French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo, the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and the legalization of gay marriage in Ireland. So for me, it’s just sort of trying to summarize these feelings in one image with my way of reacting.

“But I can’t feel pride or happiness because it is such a dark time. But, I’m just somehow glad people made use of it”. Approximately four hours after it had gone live on Twitter, it had accumulated 16,000 retweets from Jullien’s personal Twitter account; after 24 hours that number had climbed up to 53,000 retweets. The illustrator notes that people have been quick to credit him across social media, which is kind but not necessary.

Jullien, the artist behind the now iconic image that has been seen everywhere following the attacks, is a French graphic designer who is currently living in London.

“Words can sometimes be hard to translate”.

Peace for Paris is a simple painting produced in a few strokes, combining the Eiffel Tower with the symbol of peace that started life as the logo for Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

However, he added, the venture has been a success in a way, as “if it was useful for people to share and communicate their loss and need for peace, then that’s what it was meant to be”. “It’s not a time for concerns like that”, Jullien explained. For Jullien, however, that doesn’t matter.

Surprisingly, not every reaction has been positive – but Jean defended himself against allegations that he was merely attempting to profit from a tragedy: I didn’t do it to benefit from it in any way. Design. “This is a moment of unity”.