• 2020
  • Garaje Condensed

  • +
  • 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

  • 2017
  • Park MGM Las Vegas × be pôles

  • +
  • 2017
  • Park MGM Las Vegas × be pôles

Park MGM is the new name of the famous Hotel Montecarlo, on the Las Vegas Strip (Nevada). It is owned by MGM Resorts. The agency be-poles (Paris / New York) commissioned me to design the exclusive typeface of the hotel, used for its interior and exterior signage, and all of its communication.
Rather than the excessive and often caricatured image of the hotels in the city, the visual identity of the Park MGM chooses elegance, with a very refined interior design. Likewise, the typography created for signage is inspired by the proportions of classic Roman capitals, with a more contemporary design. The signs were manufactured in Las Vegas by Yesco. The interior signs are extruded, with an inverted triangular cut, and backlit. The outdoor signs, on top of the building, are absolutely gigantic: letters are 5 meters high.
Photos ©Benoît Linero ©Patrick Chin ©Reynald Philippe ©Thomas HM

  • 2008
  • Musiques de Rues — Programme

  • +
  • 2008
  • Musiques de Rues — Programme

Programme of the 3rd edition of Musiques de Rues, a festival of contemporary brass bands and artistic interventions in public space. Printed in 3 fluorescent colors + black, instead of CMYK

  • 2015
  • Le Pigalle × be pôles

  • +
  • 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

  • 2017
  • Le Barn × be pôles

  • +
  • 2017
  • Le Barn × be pôles

Cast iron is used on all signage and property objects, in a wide range of techniques: enamel plates, sign painting, silscreen, embroidery, etc.

  • 2021
  • Samaritaine Serif × Ateliers Saint-Lazare

  • +
  • 2021
  • Samaritaine Serif × Ateliers Saint-Lazare

Along with Samaritaine logotype, I was commissioned by Ateliers Saint-Lazare to develop a custom typeface for La Samaritaine brand identity. Samaritaine Serif is inspired by Latines and Elzévirs of late XIXth Century French typefoundries. With sharp triangular serifs, monocular g, flourished endings, some alternates and a very French Art Nouveau touch.

Visual dentity by Ateliers Saint-Lazare, 2021 (art Direction: Reynald Philippe).

  • 2010
  • Le mur de l’école

  • +
  • 2010
  • Le mur de l’école

Besançon school of fine arts is based on a modernist building by Josep Luis Sert (1972). With Rainer Oldendorf and students, we defined a signage system composed in Garaje 0503 Monospace Black, used for the logotype I designed at the time. Letters were reproduced in 2 sizes, A4 and A6. Rainer Oldendorf and Gilles Picouet engraved litterally the concrete wall of the main entrance, to inscribe physically this 750-units grid on the building. The paper letters were directly stuck on the wall, to announce the events of the school, forming a continuous palimpsest.

  • 2009
  • Mononi

  • +
  • 2009
  • Mononi

Mononi is a monolinear, sans serif version of the famous Bodoni, cut by Giambattista Bodoni in Parma at the end of the 19th century. I first created it for the visual identity of the Théâtre musical Besançon, a theater built at the same time by the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Mononi has a classic and refined structure, a baroque italic, but traced with a ballpoint pen. Combined with a normographer’s aesthetic, deliberately very crude, Mononi’s weights are growing from its skeleton. A special version, Mononi Zero, has no body. It is up to the user to determine the thickness of the line, thus allowing a multitude of weights, down to the finest hairlines. In 2012, I added Mononi Monospace versions, for the same theater which became the Scène nationale de Besançon. Soon available on www.205.tf

  • 2012
  • Scène nationale de Besançon — Programme

  • +
  • 2012
  • Scène nationale de Besançon — Programme

Annual programme for the season 2012-2013 of the Scène nationale de Besançon. An image never appears alone: two are superimposed, one in blue, the other in red, which creates surprising encounters. Despite the huge diversity of the iconography, often provided by the companies, this radical treatment gives a global consistency to the series. The programme is distributed with a pair of anaglyphic glasses, to animate texts and pictures in a glimpse of an eye. 132 p.

  • 2018
  • Kantia — Artha

  • +
  • 2018
  • Kantia — Artha

The incessant storms of the 18th century defeated the natural defenses that were protecting the city of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. In the middle of the 19th century, Napoleon III ordered the construction of dykes in Socoa, Sainte Barbe et Artha, that have been part of the landscape since the 20th century. Nicolas Waltefaugle's photographs show the relentless fight of these constructions against the ocean. They are printed in 2 colors, matt black and a spectacular chrome ink, exclusive to Lézard graphique silkscreen workshop, which reflects light like a mirror. The series of 8 posters (5 landscape and 3 portrait formats) are available at www.kantia.eu

  • Kantia, éditeur d’images
  • 700 × 500 mm
  • Silkscreen, 2 colors
  • Lézard graphique
  • Typeface:
  • Metallic duotone Kantia
  • 2022
  • TPE — Programme

  • +
  • 2022
  • TPE — Programme

Annual programme for the season 2022-2023 of the Théâtre Paul Éluard, in Bezons.

  • 2015
  • MM — Sarkis

  • +
  • 2015
  • MM — Sarkis

Catalogue of the exhibition “Sarkis, Les Pôles des aimants”, Musée du château des ducs de Wurtemberg, June 2014 – January 2015. 80 p.

next page