The image that inspired this week’s project has been pasted in one of my notebooks since 2012, and lingering on at the back of my mind ever since: an image of the South Pole Telescope. You can see it here (image n°5), or here (the image is much bigger once clicked). I liked it so much I started doodling logo ideas for my site, based on the beautiful geometric shapes. So far, they’ve remained doodles, scattered around the pasted image.

Why would I ever want a logo inspired by the South Pole Telescope? Because, on top of being really beautiful, it’s also full of symbols and meanings for me.

Because it’s a telescope, and I used to dream of becoming an astronaut or an astrophysicist.

Because it’s in Antarctica, a place I find so fascinating it inspired my website name: Adelie Land (Terre Adélie) is the name of the territory claimed by France in Antarctica, one of the 5 districts of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. I’m completely enthralled by the idea of those remote, isolated places with extreme climates.

And because it reminds me of a beautiful sentence Gaston Bachelard wrote in his book The Poetics of Space, that I’ve been thinking about for more than 15 years and almost consider a motto: “If a poet looks through a telescope or a microscope, he always sees the same”.

So, I didn’t try to create the logo I had in mind in 2012, it’s just a simple interpretation of what the telescope looks like. I didn’t have to go very far, I just copied a portion of the beautiful 10-metre-diameter dish and, as always, played with the colors and textures.