Global Creativity Highlights: REFY's Parisian pop-up, PUMA's Buddhist monks and designer digital camouflage

Once more, we dive into the weird, wonderful, and always eye-catching creative work from across the four corners of the planet via the medium of Magpie!

This is the semi-regular compendium from the creative minds at Hope&Glory of work that caught their eye.

Like tapas for the mind, H&G serves you, the reader, some of the filleted highlights of our favourite pieces of work from the last few months. Hopefully, they spark conversation and fuel our shared collective passions for the curated weirdness of the world.

So, without further ado, here are our top three from the pages of Magpie: Issue 015. 

REFY's analogue pop-up in Paris

Tapping into a growing trend for being more offline and in the real world, REFY launched a brilliantly analogue Parisian pop-up that literally drew a crowd. Setting up an easel by the Seine, REFY opened Art Kiosque and invited an artist to sketch portraits of passing strangers.

Looking more like an open-air gallery than a typical pop-up shop, the activation had a distinct, old-school je ne sais quoi.

The illustrator, Jess Rose Bird, has a background in fashion and a talent for capturing faces with very few strokes. Everything at the event was designed to reflect the brand's focus on creating products that offer maximum definition with minimal use. 

C’est magnifique.

Buddhist monks sport Puma's newest shoe

To draw parallels between running and meditation - and ahead of the Ladakh marathon (a race known to be anything but conventional in the running world) - Puma called on unexpected brand ambassadors: Buddhist monks. 

Appearing in traditional robes while sporting the brand’s newest trail-running shoe, the monks helped the campaign draw a beautiful analogy between the devotion, endurance, and discipline that both monks and runners live by every day.

Confuse AI cameras with digital camouflage

There seems to be a new reason to fear AI every week. 

German designer Simon Weckert took on the rollout of AI-powered surveillance cameras in Berlin by creating a T-shirt that confuses the cameras, effectively making the wearer invisible. 

The garment, albeit one that stands out in everyday fashion (some might say) with its hypnotic pattern, is designed to ‘trick’ and confuse object-recognition algorithms. 

Snazzy and practical.