It looks like something he made in a rush. Like something he scribbled on a cocktail napkin. Something he could have drawn in four strokes. Circle, upside-down V, cross. Black ink on a white background. The image — the marriage of the peace sign and the Eiffel tower — is the product of French graphic designer Jean Jullien. He posted his work, titled “Peace for Paris,” on Twitter and Instagram near midnight on November 13, just hours after the massive terrorist attacks on six separate locations in the city left hundreds wounded and over 120 dead.
Jullien created the image only a minute after learning about the attacks. “It was done on my lap, on a very loose sketchbook, with a brush and ink,” he told Wired. He didn’t think it out beforehand or go to the page with a plan. “It was more an instinctive, human reaction than an illustrator’s reaction.”
The image went viral. Jullien’s original tweet has been retweeted almost 60,000 times; his original Instagram has over 163,000 likes. Earlier today, he posted another image on Instagram thanking his followers “for your messages of support for Paris… I just want to say that I did it in the most spontaneous and sincere way, as a heartfelt reaction to what was happening. It’s a drawing for Paris, for all the victims and their families.” He emphasized that he does not seek any “benefit” from it. “It’s a sign for everybody to share and show their support and solidarity.” (Jullien did not respond to ThinkProgress’ request for comment as of publication.)
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The concept seems so simple — the Eiffel tower’s structure so obviously aligned with the innards of the peace sign — it’s almost amazing that no one has ever thought of it before. The Eiffel tower is a spry 126 years old, and the peace sign has been bopping around the public consciousness since Easter of 1958. Gerald Holtom designed the symbol for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War to plaster on placards for a march from London to Aldermaston, site of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Holtom later described the image as being reflective of his inner state, which was one of “an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it. It was ridiculous at first and such a puny thing.”
So why did Jullien’s image catch on? What makes something so simple so special?
An effective symbol is “something that usually connects to someone’s preexisting knowledge about something,” said John Caserta, head of the graphic design department at the Rhode Island School of Design. “So to combine the Eiffel tower and the peace symbol, it’s a two-for-one.” An image like this “is like a phrase, or a simple piece of text, a title, a catchphrase. It’s a visual version of that. It’s something that is already connecting or resonating with people, so it works immediately. It doesn’t ask them to work very hard.”
“In this context, any messages of peace are especially moving, because they exist in a landscape of so much violence, xenophobic noise,” said Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics. Jullien’s drawing is “so eloquently simple, it also conveys a sense of timelessness and strength,” said McCloud. “You see something like that and it has the ring of truth about it. It feels like something that won’t blow away in the wind. It doesn’t feel ephemeral.”
It doesn’t feel mass produced. But it feels like it’s for the masses, nevertheless.”
The fact that it is so obviously drawn by hand adds to its emotional punch, said McCloud, especially considering how it stands out against the usual photoshopped offerings on Instagram. “I think that sometimes, that slightly sloppy, rapidly drawn quality… can strengthen the symbol, because the abstract nature of the symbol shines through despite that imperfect rendering. I think that can often be a lot more persuasive than something done in, say, Adobe Illustrator. This was made by the hand of a human being, you know?”
“That it’s made by hand makes sense, because it’s a tragedy that’s on a very human scale,” said Caserta. “It’s not childlike at all, but I think whenever you have something handmade, there is something kind of naive and pure and simple, and it brings your guard down a bit and makes you realize some of the basics. Peace is one of those. Without it, we don’t have much.”
“It doesn’t feel mass produced,” McCloud said. “But it feels like it’s for the masses, nevertheless.”
Caserta agreed. “Just looking a it, it feels immediate, and when something happens of this sort, it makes sense that it wouldn’t be highly polished or corporate. That it is someone there responding right away.”
The image does not borrow any other French imagery or pageantry: There’s no flag, no red or blue. “Black and white is the traditional, speedy-quick, of the people” choice, said Caserta. Though it’s free to copy-and-paste (or retweet or repost or what have you) online, in the world of print, a black and white picture is inexpensive to reproduce, and “it tends to be more honest for that reason. It seems more pure, more direct… From a graphic design standpoint, it makes sense that this kind of image would emerge.”
“The message of peace is one that is universal,” said Caserta. “It’s not saying, ‘Let’s be strong.’ It’s easy to agree with its message. Forget about the way it looks. [The idea of], ‘Peace should come out of this, or we want peace there, we want peace to result from that, we believe in peace,’ I think that message is different from a national flag. I think we’ve seen America take its flag in an outward, almost aggressive way — not overtly, but it has been used to create such nationalistic feelings, the [flags] feel like they’ve become synonymous with war and power. This doesn’t have that, and I think it’s easier to get behind it universally, no matter what your political views are or what your background.”
“Peace for Paris” is also “a great way to express it without having to come up with your own phrase or language,” Caserta said. The trouble with words here is twofold. Any language-based picture would be limited by design. It’s fair to assume that not everyone who shared “Peace for Paris” is also fluent in French; the beauty of imagery-as-solidarity is that you don’t have to be.
“To use words is almost trickier,” said Caserta. “Imagine a press release: ‘We are deeply saddened by the events…’ it seems kind of canned. But to repost or share an image, if it strikes the right note or sensibility, it’s so much easier than trying to say your own thoughts on it, and universally legible.”
It’s also easier to accidentally say the wrong thing, as was the case with the #PrayforParis hashtag, which (though well-intentioned) doesn’t really jive with Paris’ “secular culture and history, [which] is one of the things they were being attacked for,” said McCloud. A Charlie Hebdo illustrator, Joan Sfar, responded to that rallying cry with a cartoon telling “friends from the whole world, thank you for #prayforParis, but we don’t need more religion! Our faith goes to music! Kisses! Life! Champagne and joy! #Parisisaboutlife.”
What the “Peace for Paris” picture does really well is stay in unimpeachable territory. No one is going to argue with peace. “I think you may be seeing the graphic equivalent of what happens in political speech, which is that people veer from specificity as much as they possibly can,” said McCloud.
Choosing to express solidarity with Paris by calling for peace is also a means of avoiding another natural response: demanding vengeance through violence. “I think one of the purposes it might serve is as a kind of personal choosing of sides within one’s own emotional landscape,” said McCloud. “The first emotional reaction might just have been to wish to go find more ISIS fighters and just blow them sky-high. Or wish, ‘If only it was a country we could bomb.’ And in choosing, instead, to embrace something like this, it’s a way of refusing to be drawn into that world.”
Why share the image at all? Is it a way of grabbing the axis of the Earth in your hands, tugging it close, and forcing the world to revolve around you? Is it a way to advertise to friends and followers alike that you are an informed, decent human being? Is it some kind of hybrid between empathy and FOMO? Is it that, if one is to be active on social media, one cannot ignore these massive intrusions into the ordinary day-in-day-out of life? Sure, posting that selfie from study abroad is maybe sort of a tacky way to participate in this dialogue. But maybe it’s better than posting something completely unrelated, or than posting nothing at all.
That it’s made by hand makes sense, because it’s a tragedy that’s on a very human scale.
“It’s just so incredibly difficult to find anything that seems appropriate to the moment,” said McCloud. “But you have to say something. Otherwise yeah, it’s like you don’t give a shit. And some people retweeted it smugly. But I think others did it, partially, because it was a way of expressing sympathy while also keeping their mouths shut and not saying anything stupid.” In the aftermath of a tragedy on this scale, “I think it’s that desperation to connect in some way that’s not vulgar or shallow.”
“It’s hard to log on, for lack of a better word, to connect to a social site and be silent in these moments, or to post something that’s unrelated,” said Caserta. “I think there’s a certain, almost period-of-reaction-and-mourning, where you’re not going to talk about your event coming up or your grandma’s cute poodle or something. So in order to participate the way you would normally, this becomes the content, even if you don’t feel super strongly about it.”
For people who know that they want to say something but don’t know what that something should be, images like “Peace for Paris” provide a sort of script. “I think in absence of a truly personal statement, there’s a need for a universal one, a need for a premade one,” said Caserta. “It feels like a way of joining other people who use it. I think it’s actually saying: This is hitting the right note for me, I also believe this, let me share as I would normally share.”