• 2017
  • America × be pôles

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  • 2017
  • America × be pôles

Launched by François Busnel and Éric Fottorino, this mook tells of America, its beauty, but also its faults and cracks. Each quarter, the greatest French and American writers are invited to become the memorialists of an extraordinary era. 4 issues for 4 years: the time of Donald Trump’s presidential term.
For the header, I designed a custom lettering inspired by American typefaces, something between Woody Allen and Ralph Lauren. Lowercase m is an obvious reference to Windsor, but the wordmark is sturdier.

  • 2007
  • Blago Bung

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  • 2007
  • Blago Bung

A series of posters for Blago Bung events, Emily Harvey Foundation (NYC, USA) and Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich, CH). Art, Sound, Poetry and Performance. Posters are printed in split fountain : gradients evolve during the printing process, each poster is unique.

  • 2011
  • Ici l’Onde

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  • 2011
  • Ici l’Onde

For the identity of the festival Ici l’Onde, organised by Why Note in Dijon, I decided not to use any vectors or fonts, and use photography instead. The poster for the 2011 edition is the result of a complex setup, in which I sought to capture the reflection of the text on the water.

  • 2022
  • Bugatti × Interbrand

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  • 2022
  • Bugatti × Interbrand

I was commissioned by Interbrand to redesign Bugatti wordmark and monogram, and to develop an exclusive typographic system that reflects BUGATTI's brand promise.
The type family is composed of three styles that accurately meet the typographic needs of the brand:
BUGATTI Display, an all-caps typeface for headings;
BUGATTI Text, a 2 weights typeface for texts;
BUGATTI Mono, a fixed-pitch font for highlighting technical information.

Art direction: Interbrand
Licensing and font engineering: 205TF

  • 2014
  • Ici l’Onde

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  • 2014
  • Ici l’Onde

For the 2014 poster of Ici l’Onde, I captured the light of the text, shaking my laptop and simply shooting the screen. We made 4 posters out of it : the annual poster in 3 tones (warm red, process blue and gold), and 3 trimestrial variations with only 2 tones (red/blue, red/gold, and blue/gold).

  • 2023
  • Le Livre sur la Place

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  • 2023
  • Le Livre sur la Place

A new and flexible visual identity for Nancy book fair, created in 1979 under the patronage of the Académie Goncourt. Typeset in a Baskerville rip-off by Claude Jacob, owned by Nancy printer Berger-Levrault since the late 18th Century, and digitized by ANRT in 2017-2018 under the name of Baskervville.

  • 2014
  • Luxeuil script

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  • 2014
  • Luxeuil script

Luxeuil script is a very rare Merovingian script, from the beginning of the seventh century. It is derived from uncial, half-uncial and roman cursive: before the advent of the Carolingian Minuscule, it is considered as one of the first formal minuscule.
Intrigued by this local unknown writing, born a few kilometers from my home, I studied it with my friend Claude-Laurent François and tried to design a digital version of it. I had to understand the ductus and then to reproduce the gesture and stroke of the pen. Rather than drawing the outlines, I digitized the inner skeleton, and applied afterwards a virtual elliptic pen. This dynamic approach allowed me to create the very large number of ligatures contained in this handwriting: these ligatures are created automatically with initial, medial or final contextual forms.
Unpublished

  • 2011
  • Émergences

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  • 2011
  • Émergences

Poster of the 4th edition of the festival Émergences, a week dedicated to young creation in Besançon. Black + Gloss varnish. Selected in Chaumont design graphique festival.

  • 2020
  • Garaje Condensed

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  • 2020
  • Garaje Condensed

Garaje takes its inspiration both from the alphabets of the Bauhaus school and the vernacular inscriptions of Spanish garage owners: two worlds that share a desire to reduce typographic forms to simple geometric elements. At the Bauhaus this geometrization is ideological: it represents a rejection of tradition and the affirmation of an objective and rational vocabulary. With garage owners it is a simple matter of logic, certainly due to an ignorance of tradition. It is somewhat naïve to wish to reduce the shapes of the alphabet to elementary forms. Perfect geometrical forms seem less than perfect to our eyes: type Design abounds with optical corrections that compensate for our perception of forms.
Garaje plays specifically with this paradox: its construction is rigorously geometrical, anchored to a scalable modular grid, with no optical correction. A perfectly objective system, but a typographical aberration, simultaneously right and wrong. For the last 20 years, I have extended this family in every direction, to the point of absurdity: extremely narrow or outlandishly wide letterforms, all built from the same modules. Today it is a complete system, available in 44 widths and 5 weights. The complete family counts 445 fonts, hundreds of thousands of glyphs, and zero contrast: Garaje is a typeface which is at the same time brutal and playful, rational and naïve. Garaje Condensed subfamily goes from 0703 (7 on 3 grid) to 3503 (35 on 3), and includes 145 fonts, + one variable font. Its construction allows to compose in many sizes without changing the stem weight. Specimen made with DrawBot by Rémi Forte.
Available at 205TF.
Online specimen

  • 2020
  • Garaje Mid

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  • 2020
  • Garaje Mid

Garaje takes its inspiration both from the alphabets of the Bauhaus school and the vernacular inscriptions of Spanish garage owners: two worlds that share a desire to reduce typographic forms to simple geometric elements. At the Bauhaus this geometrization is ideological: it represents a rejection of tradition and the affirmation of an objective and rational vocabulary. With garage owners it is a simple matter of logic, certainly due to an ignorance of tradition. It is somewhat naïve to wish to reduce the shapes of the alphabet to elementary forms. Perfect geometrical forms seem less than perfect to our eyes: type Design abounds with optical corrections that compensate for our perception of forms.
Garaje plays specifically with this paradox: its construction is rigorously geometrical, anchored to a scalable modular grid, with no optical correction. A perfectly objective system, but a typographical aberration, simultaneously right and wrong. For the last 20 years, I have extended this family in every direction, to the point of absurdity: extremely narrow or outlandishly wide letterforms, all built from the same modules. Today it is a complete system, available in 44 widths and 5 weights. The complete family counts 445 fonts, hundreds of thousands of glyphs, and zero contrast: Garaje is a typeface which is at the same time brutal and playful, rational and naïve. Garaje Mid subfamily goes from 0503 (5 on 3 grid) to 0504 (5 on 4 grid) and 0603 (6 on 3 grid), and includes 15 fonts + 3 variable fonts. Its construction allows to compose in many widths without changing the stem weight.
Available at 205TF.
Online specimen

  • 2023
  • Les 2 Scènes — Cinéma 22-23

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  • 2023
  • Les 2 Scènes — Cinéma 22-23

Posters for the season 2022-2023 of Les 2 Scènes Cinéma.
Typeset in Album Sans

  • 2015
  • Le Pigalle × be pôles

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  • 2015
  • Le Pigalle × be pôles

Le Pigalle is a hotel in the eponymous district of Paris. The agency be-poles (Paris / New York) commissioned me to create its custom typeface, which is inspired by the vernacular signs and inscriptions of this lively and typical district. Photos © Benoît Linero

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