We use the generic chaining device proposed by Talagrand to establish exponential bounds on the deviation probability of some suprema of random processes. Then, given a random vector $ξ$ in $\R^{n}$ the components of which are independent and admit a suitable exponential moment, we deduce a deviation inequality for the squared Euclidean norm of the projection of $ξ$ onto a linear subspace of $\R^{n}$. Finally, we provide an application of such an inequality to statistics, performing model selection in the regression setting when the errors are possibly non-Gaussian and the collection of models possibly large.