These charming illustrations turn Paris into a giant Olympic playground

The Paris Olympics are only four months away, but already, the games are gate-crashing the city. Fishermen are fencing by the Seine. Teens are playing tennis from their Hausmannian balconies. A mustachioed bro is surfing on the Canal Saint Martin.



Escrime , Javi Aznarez. [Image: courtesy The Parisianer ]



At least this is the version of Paris portrayed on the cover—or more accurately, covers—of an imaginary French magazine called The Parisianer. The magazine, which has no editorial portion and is more akin to an art project, is illustrated by 43 artists who each designed a cover dedicated to one Olympic sport. Starting today, the illustrations will be displayed on the wrought-iron fences of the City Hall of Paris and published in a coffee table book.



Tennis , Jean-Michel Tixier. [Image: courtesy The Parisianer ]



The Parisianer is the brainchild of graphic designer friends Michael Prigent and Aurélie Pollet. When the two first dreamed up the magazine, the name Le Parisien was already taken, but that didn’t really matter: the duo was more interested in a certain American publication with the same suffix. “Our biggest dream was to be on the cover of the The New Yorker, but to be able to do that you need to have a big career, which was not our case,” says Prigent with a laugh. So, the duo launched their own, albeit fictitious, version of the magazine, focusing not on NYC but on Par-ee. “We tried to be a sibling, not a copycat,” Prigent told me, noting that he borrowed the concept and the layout of The New Yorker but designed his own typography.



Cyclisme sur route , François Ravard. [Image: courtesy The Parisianer ]



The first edition of The Parisianer came out in December 2013. Since then, Prigent and Pollet have commissioned hundreds more artists to paint vignettes—sometimes surprising, often satirical—of Parisian life. The illustrations have appeared in many books and been the subject of several exhibitions, including in the Musée d’Orsay, and at Terminal 2E of Charles de Gaulle airport (still on display as of two weeks ago.)



100 mètres , Michael Prigent. [Image: courtesy The Parisianer ]



Each time, the team tackled a different topic or theme, like the city’s iconic monuments, or what Paris could look like in 2050. So naturellement, when Prigent found out Paris was going to host The Games in 2024, he set the wheels in motions and started looking for funding to pay illustrators who would bring The Parisianer‘s ambitious Olympics project to life.



Football , Émilie Sandoval. [Image: courtesy The Parisianer ]



“Like it or hate it, [The Games are] going to be here, and we needed to do something about it,” he says. But a series of illustrations that portrayed athletes competing in various stadiums wasn’t going to cut it. So the team gave the artists a simple brief: “Don’t put your story in a sports field; put it in real life, and don’t make it a real sport, just find something that will look like a sport.”



Tackwondo , Chester Holme. [Image: courtesy The Parisianer ]



Artists couldn’t include any official Olympic symbols, be it the five interlocking rings, the Olympic flame, or the official Paris 2024 Olympic logo. “We have to pay millions for that, and we don’t even have thousands,” Prigent jests. But that was all the better: this project wasn’t about the Olympics, it was about Paris.



Lancer de Disque , Vincent Bergier. [Image: courtesy The Parisianer ]



In the end, each artist came up with their own hilarious and relatable interpretation of the brief. Vincent Bergier imagined a DJ “throwing” a vinyl reminiscent of a disc. Chester Holme drew up a red-heeled woman, her hands encumbered with a grocery bag, a coffee cup mid-spill, and a dog on a leash, kicking her leg up to hit the elevator button Taekwondo-style. And Prigent himself pictured an apéro-thirsty crowd sprinting towards the last remaining table en terrace.



Every illustration is different, but one message prevails: Paris is already a jungle gym, and living in it should be its own Olympic sport.