For the first phase of the exhi­bi­tion of the Fonds International d’Objets Imprimés de Petite Taille (the International Collection of Small-Format Printed Objects), the toner toner col­lec­tive pro­po­sed repu­bli­shing three docu­ments that led up to the show and tack­ling each month a new sub­ject having to do with the sta­tus of prin­ted objects and/or infor­ma­tion. Whereas the first deals with the dis­tri­bu­tors of adver­ti­sing pros­pec­tuses, and the second focuses on the spec­ta­cu­lar side of infor­ma­tion, the third is an excerpt from Inge Scholl’s work which des­cribes in this pas­sage the care taken in desi­gning tracts for the resistance

To cele­brate the tech­ni­cal pro­wess of the Parisian prin­ter Gerfau, Christophe Jacquet brought toge­ther dif­ferent pre- and post-prin­ting tech­niques to deve­lop a visual essay form echoing the famous Rembrandt oil pain­ting Slaughtered Ox. Thus, screen-prin­ted lami­na­ted gray card­board com­bines with prin­ting on light­weight off­set paper (“bible paper”), a rec­tan­gu­lar insert, and adhe­sives to create a docu­ment that boasts mul­tiple layers.

For this work, which goes back over a series of confe­rences and an exhi­bi­tion on immi­gra­tion issues in Central Europe after 1902, two kine­tic tech­niques were used along with rea­ding of the text. The first is an ani­ma­ted sequence of images that allows a rea­der thum­bing through this flip book to see migra­ting shapes that go from a bird to a hand or boat anchor. The second makes it pos­sible to read on the edge of the book­let, depen­ding on which direc­tion the book­let is fol­ded in, two hand­writ­ten ins­crip­tions which are taken to be an English and a Czech ver­sion of the same content.

In charge of the visual iden­ti­ty of Moscow’s Strelka Institute, Anna Kulachëk has been par­ti­cu­lar­ly inter­es­ted in mate­rials used in prin­ted items. Here two invi­ta­tions with rein­for­ced stiff­ness: the first plays with a gree­nish tint and the trans­pa­ren­cy of Plexiglas, while the lami­na­tion of colo­red paper stock of the second refe­rences the mot­tling of book edges.

Following his The Annotated Reader pro­ject, Ryan Gander conti­nued with his inter­est in anno­ta­ting major texts, desi­gning this sten­cil whose ope­nings are defi­ned by the artist’s anno­ta­tions of a page of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. A visual syn­the­sis of tex­tual infor­ma­tion that is an invi­ta­tion to the ope­ning par­ty for the Printed Matter art book fair.

We do not work alone, a publi­shing house spe­cia­li­zed in artists’ mul­tiples, pro­du­ced with Elsa Werth an object in kee­ping with the firm’s inter­est in the joyous appro­pria­tion of objects from the world of work. The objec­tive here was to go from 1 to 30 while inclu­ding all of the ruler’s mea­sures via a com­plex arith­me­ti­cal equation.

For the Patcharavipa jewel­ry brand, the gra­phic desi­gners came up with a sen­sual cata­logue that uses 4 dif­ferent paper stocks in mul­tiple for­mats, prin­ted in black or embos­sed. This com­bi­na­tion is dis­creet in terms of the infor­ma­tion pro­vi­ded, lea­ving room for the tones and mass of the dif­ferent stocks to work their effect.

For the Zurich res­tau­rant MIKI Ramen, the gra­phic desi­gner Laurenz Brunner plays off the contrast bet­ween subt­le­ty and pre­cio­si­ty of hot foil stam­ping in the noo­dle motifs and an untrea­ted raw reverse reser­ved for the usual infor­ma­tion about the venue.

The coun­ter­forms of the motif, present on the reverse, as well as the use of chrome and glos­sy white coa­ted paper stock on the front (the space usual­ly reser­ved for wri­ting) cer­tain­ly limit the appro­pria­tion and per­so­na­li­za­tion that the pho­to­gra­pher and art direc­tor Qiu Yang might wish to car­ry out with this card from his per­so­nal stationary.

For this item, which brings toge­ther an invi­ta­tion to the show ope­ning, a small pos­ter, and an invi­ta­tion to a din­ner, the English stu­dio used an impo­sing two-color paper­clip to join three sepa­rate sheets, fol­ded or not, that use eight Pantone colors in all. This visual fire­work unders­cores the theme of the show, name­ly, mixing the work of artists from dif­ferent gene­ra­tions tack­ling the sub­ject of humor.

Since 2014, Julie Peeters and Scott Ponik have been desi­gning the invi­ta­tions to show ope­nings for the Canadian art cen­ter Artspeak. The cen­tral hori­zon­tal sco­ring of the cards invites users to trans­form the ini­tial A5 for­mat into a fol­ded A6 and thus iso­late the bit­map­ped image. The fine­ness and ele­gance of the lat­ter is rein­for­ced by the use of a puff ink.

When put­ting toge­ther a col­lec­tion of small-for­mat items, the cura­tors loo­ked long and hard for a pro­ject that bor­ro­wed the paper stock and mul­tiple folds nota­bly used in medi­ca­tion notices. Finding none, they used the prin­ciple in the invi­ta­tion, allo­wing them to include that type of docu­ment in the collection.

Brought out by the publi­shing house BAT, the fore­run­ner of <o> future <o>, FAN (Free Art News) would turn over to an author, exhi­bi­tion cura­tor, artist, or aca­de­mic the two sides of an A3 for­mat fol­ded into an A6. Each issue was free and prin­ted out in 100 copies on a riso­graph prin­ter, then pos­ted to the win­ners whose names were ran­dom­ly cho­sen from the list of subscribers.

La per­ruque is a review in a long, albeit nar­row, for­mat that publishes samples of typo­gra­phy. When prin­ted, each issue is gan­ged-up with other print runs at the stu­dio of two off­set prin­ters, Belgian and French, taking advan­tage of space that is usual­ly left untouched.

Both gal­le­ry infor­ma­tion sheet and exhi­bi­tion cata­logue, the book­let tit­led Il pleut, tulipe bor­rows the flip book for­mat. In its beau­ti­ful pages can be seen the 24 Japanese cha­rac­ters (hira­ga­na) in Elise Florenty and Marcel Türkowksy’s video piece Conversation avec un cac­tus, fol­lo­wed by a screen­shot of films shown in the exhi­bi­tion. Printed sole­ly on the ver­so (left-hand) side of the book, the texts and gene­ral infor­ma­tion are set in the same body text throu­ghout the booklet.

For the pro­gram of the cen­te­na­ry com­me­mo­ra­tion of the lar­gest strike in Switzerland, Simone Koller and Corina Neuenschwander shif­ted by just over 2.5 cm the first fold, slight­ly leng­the­ning the for­mat, which nor­mal­ly would have been a fol­ded A5. Thanks to that lit­tle trick, the repro­duc­tion of an ori­gi­nal tract – set in Fraktur, a type­face that is emble­ma­tic of the ear­ly per­iod – contrasts with a more contem­po­ra­ry view and the use of a typi­cal­ly Swiss layout.

Adeline Mollard and Clemens Piontek take care of the visual iden­ti­ty of the Swiss music fes­ti­val Bad Bonn Kilbi. They select a sin­gu­lar sup­port to get the word out about the event. In 2018 they pro­du­ced a sti­cker whose cutout shape and paper stock imi­ta­ted a CD-ROM’s, thus refe­ren­cing a musi­cal world that was alrea­dy in the past.

By way of a pro­gram, as a sup­port docu­ment for sum­ma­ri­zing lec­tures and talks that pro­duce a large amount of docu­men­ta­tion, offi­ceabc pro­du­ced a very limi­ted edi­tion of neon-colo­red bro­chures. Printed on a machine that nor­mal­ly serves to pro­duce and fold maps, these bro­chures also make it pos­sible to archive the lec­tures, which are too often consi­gned to obli­vion because an online-acces­sible archive is lacking.

This docu­ment is a cata­logue, a label, and a pos­ter at one and the same time. It tackles the dif­ferent spa­tial and tem­po­ral layers invol­ved in the Jérôme Dupeyrat exhi­bi­tion at the Abattoirs de Toulouse. The dif­ferent folds and orien­ta­tions of the text orga­nize and seg­ment the document’s uses.

In charge of CRAC Alsace’s visual iden­ti­ty, Coline Sunier and Charles Mazé pro­po­sed an ini­tia­tion into hira­ga­na cha­rac­ters for the Il pleut, tulipe show. Hiragana is one of the four wri­ting sys­tems employed in Japanese and is like­wise used in Elise Florenty and Marcel Türkowksy’s video piece Conversation avec un cac­tus, which was shown during the event. These invi­ta­tions are keys for unders­tan­ding and trans­la­ting the video, as well as lear­ning tools that are dear to gra­phic desi­gners, the art cen­ter being loca­ted in the buil­ding of a for­mer school.

While busi­ness cards often seem to vie with one ano­ther for the thi­ckest card stock pos­sible, the card of this Birmingham gal­le­ry uses not only a res­tric­tive square for­mat but also an ultra­light sup­port that trans­forms it into a pre­cious object to be hand­led with great care.

Like doors ope­ning on the archives of past and present cura­to­rial inten­tions, this publi­ca­tion by the contem­po­ra­ry art cen­ter in Ivry-sur-Seine arti­cu­lates, in the out-of-the-way places, in the creases and folds, a col­lec­tion of power­ful­ly contras­ting paper and ico­no­gra­phic mate­rials that have been constant­ly upda­ted and renewed.

Fictions, abs­trac­tions joyeuses et ten­ta­tives ordi­naires (Fictions, Ordinary Joyous and Tentative Abstractions), is the title of the cata­logue side of the pos­ter desi­gned for the 2005 Jean-Marc Ballée exhi­bi­tion. On one side, the pos­ter adver­tises the upco­ming show, while on the other, it archives, docu­ments and com­piles the dis­played work. This invitation/residency archive stresses forms, tex­tures and mate­rials, and is prin­ted on a deli­cate paper stock with a calen­de­red cro­co­dile finish.

To announce the upco­ming Chaumont International Poster and Graphic Design Festival and wish atten­dees a hap­py new year in 2007, the city sent out a modest docu­ment that began to bring toge­ther the gra­phic ele­ments of the pos­ter that was to herald the event. Legend has it that the whole pro­ject was done at a small printer’s in Paris’s 18^th arron­dis­se­ment whose rates for hot foil stam­ping cru­shed all competitors.

A bro­ken demo­nic reflec­tion of Alice in the loo­king glass announces the Antidote 7 exhi­bi­tion at the Galerie des Galeries. Supporting the subt­le­ties of the desi­gn and com­po­si­tion, a spot coa­ting adds shine to the black ink prin­ted on matt paper.

This group of six modules allows a gra­phic desi­gner to deve­lop a range of gra­phic forms that draw on the tex­tures of adhe­sive venee­ring. Here the col­lec­tion is put to good use by Mathias Schweizer in desi­gning a typo­gra­phy in which the came­ra is the essen­tial tool for cap­tu­ring the com­po­si­tions and let­ters that are produced.

To pro­duce this invi­ta­tion to the fashion show, the gra­phic desi­gners took a docu­ment from Givenchy’s Hubert col­lec­tion, trans­la­ted it and inter­pre­ted it in eight Pantone colors as a fol­ded pos­ter that slips into an envelope.

The visual iden­ti­ty of the art cen­ter Looiersgracht 60, desi­gned by Studio Veronica Ditting, took off from the wish to store and conserve all of the center’s prin­ted mat­ter. Thus, each docu­ment is per­fo­ra­ted so it can be filed away in a bin­der. Treatments and folds for the exhi­bi­tion book­lets vary each time, as do the num­ber and shape of the holes. This inten­tio­nal free­dom makes it pos­sible to iden­ti­fy and group the dif­ferent events within the series.

In charge of the visual iden­ti­ty for the Amsterdam art cen­ter Looiersgracht 60, Studio Veronica Ditting used for the enve­lopes a paper stock whose colors contrast with the block of black ink prin­ted on the inside sur­face. This gua­ran­tees pri­va­cy of the envelope’s contents while adding an ele­ment of sur­prise when the mis­sive is opened.

For six years, the gra­phic desi­gner had his prin­ter hold onto dif­ferent “waste sheets” (the ini­tial prin­ted sheets whose evol­ving qua­li­ty – with the prin­ted work still being adjus­ted – ren­ders them unu­sable). These waste sheets or spoils were the result of prin­ting works he had desi­gned, a good num­ber of which were for his own publi­shing house, BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE. They have been com­pi­led in a thick book whose inter­est lies in sur­veying a col­lec­tion of pro­jects at the very moment they were being undertaken.

Both a gal­le­ry infor­ma­tion sheet and cata­logue that echoes the exhi­bi­tion dis­play at Lausanne’s ENAC, the fol­ded cir­cu­lar docu­ment here pre­sents all of the works that appa­rent­ly fue­led Aldo Rossi’s exem­pla­ry book The Architecture of the City, 1966.

The three names of the foun­ders of the Mendes Wood DM Gallery are cen­tral to the venue’s name, so it is the arti­cu­la­tion of their ini­tials that brings the gallery’s gra­phic iden­ti­ty to life. Like a kind of never-ending rewor­king of the works in a show, each sup­port offers dif­ferent arti­cu­la­tions of the ini­tials in a range of monograms.

The Contemporary Art Club of Vienna spreads the word through a visual iden­ti­ty that is lar­ge­ly based on typo­gra­phy. To pro­mote the three events of one of their tri­mes­ters, Manuel Raeder crea­ted a series of colo­red ultra­light paper stocks, a sheet of which was added to the card in its enve­lope. The enve­lope, too, was dou­bled with an ultra­light paper.

For an exhi­bi­tion at the expe­ri­men­tal art school F + F, the NOI stu­dio pro­po­sed, in a decep­ti­ve­ly square for­mat, an invi­ta­tion in which the side with the pho­to­gra­phic treat­ment echoes the typo­gra­phic reverse by reu­sing the “F + F” cha­rac­ters but through the human body.

For this scree­ning room, concert hall and event space for culture in Brussels, the two gra­phic desi­gners came up with an outer cover for the pro­grams that echoes the venue’s usual invi­ta­tions, which were desi­gned in turn as an echo of the events pro­gram thanks to cutouts and various folds.

To intro­duce the 2017–2018 women’s autumn/winter col­lec­tion for the Loewe brand, M/M (Paris) desi­gned a small book for Jonathan Anderson. The print run was limi­ted to the num­ber of seats at the fashion show. The book revi­sits the sta­ging of the event, desi­gned around a rare col­lec­tion of orchids and ori­gi­nal pho­to­graphs by Lionel Wendt, making it pos­sible to puts words to the images, signs and cha­rac­ters inclu­ded in the fashion show.

To esta­blish a link bet­ween the dif­ferent works brought out in the Beyond Sound imprint, publi­shed by Christophe Daviet-Théry, the gra­phic desi­gners sug­ges­ted crea­ting a paper echo from one publi­ca­tion to the next based on the kinds of stock used. Thus, the paper stock employed inside one publi­ca­tion is used in the cover of the next, and so on.

In 2018, to pro­mote the change of address of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques right at the heart of the institution’s sea­so­nal gree­ting, the gra­phic desi­gners offe­red dif­ferent com­pu­ter-gene­ra­ted phrases from the same gram­ma­ti­cal structure.

Portfolios, flyers, stamps, sti­ckers, prin­ting on silk and glas­sine, spe­cia­li­zed logo prin­ting on paper – invi­ta­tions to Givenchy fashion shows free­ly take the form of images and objects in kee­ping with the fashion desi­gner Riccardo Tisci’s ima­gi­na­tion in an unres­trai­ned dia­logue with the brand’s adver­ti­sing cam­pai­gns. Meant to be worn around the wrist, this mask, usual­ly an object for dis­guise and for others’ eyes, here bor­rows a motif that the gra­phic desi­gners have retur­ned to seve­ral times.

Tubelight is a free Dutch review of art cri­ti­cism. The gra­phic desi­gn of issues 71 to 87 was entrus­ted to the Meeusontwerpt stu­dio. Done in the A4 for­mat and prin­ted in black on stan­dard off­set white stock, the review boasts a pre­cut line at the cen­ter of its pages which allows rea­ders to tear off and keep for later refe­rence a pure­ly visual ver­sion sole­ly with images.

The invi­ta­tion to the pho­to­gra­pher Cuny Janssen’s show, desi­gned by Jana & Hilde Meeus, is prin­ted on a card whose back is the color of stan­dard brown paper, contras­ting nice­ly with the front and its more com­mon white coa­ted sur­face. Two pre­cut dia­go­nal lines cross the for­mat ver­ti­cal­ly, making it pos­sible to stand the card upright when you fold in the corners.

These post­cards were publi­shed by Experimental Jetset for various exhi­bi­tions, the publi­ca­tion of their mono­graph, changes of address, lec­tures, or the desi­gn of stamps. These items of cor­res­pon­dence attest to the gene­ro­si­ty of the stu­dio in terms of wri­ting. The studio’s approach to pro­jects is to inte­grate a spe­cial rela­tion­ship to texts for the pre­sen­ta­tion of and com­ments on the work and its sub­ject, going so far as to attain the use of typo­gra­phic forms. Generally, Experimental Jetset takes into account the for­mat and moda­li­ties for get­ting docu­ments out to the public in order to adjust the use of each sup­port that is employed.

With his inter­est in the modes and tools of pro­duc­tion, Xavier Antin pro­duces dif­ferent series of bronze screws the wrench for which is a let­ter or glyph desi­gned in a Univers type­face. Normally uni­ver­sal in its use, the tool is limi­ted to those who have one of the spe­cia­li­zed wrenches. The tool becomes sculp­ture but also a publi­ca­tion, arti­cu­la­ting dif­ferent signs among its various iterations.

The gra­phic iden­ti­ty of the Centre d’Art Contemporain of Brétigny-sur-Orge was deve­lo­ped during a long-term resi­den­cy by Coline Sunier and Charles Mazé. A lan­guage is arti­cu­la­ted through the crea­tion and use of two type­faces, whose names are bor­ro­wed from those of the limi­ted-stop tran­sit line, the RER, that links Brétigny and Paris. LARA grows with each of the pro­jects of CACB, which represent so many occa­sions to acti­vate the addi­tio­nal signs drawn from the center’s visual envi­ron­ment; whe­reas the BALI type­face, sans serif and without contrast, is used to trans­cribe mes­sages. A sample of the lat­ter is prin­ted here on a gray pen­cil, allo­wing BALI to be a part of all kinds of the art center’s inscriptions.

In order to liven up school visits to Florian Sumi’s Membrains exhi­bi­tions, CAC Brétigny pro­du­ced a series of five tem­po­ra­ry tat­toos that bor­ro­wed cha­rac­ters and gra­phic signs from the Lycée Jean-Pierre Timbaud, the high school loca­ted oppo­site the art cen­ter, and had them rede­si­gned by gra­phic designers.

Adeline Mollard and Katharina Reidy take care of the visual iden­ti­ty of the Swiss music fes­ti­val Bad Bonn Kilbi. Each year they select a sin­gu­lar sup­port to get the word out about the event. In 2017, Chinese for­tune cookies contai­ning sayings in German were ser­ved up with the event pro­gram rather than with tea.

For his exhi­bi­tion cycle at CNEAI Centre natio­nal d’art contem­po­rain, the artist Christophe Lemaitre invi­ted the gra­phic desi­gners of Spassky Fischer to do the shows’ visual com­mu­ni­ca­tions. For each of the four stages, a digi­tal pho­to print repro­du­cing a piece done for the exhi­bi­tion was enclo­sed in an enve­lope on which the usual infor­ma­tion accom­pa­nying an invi­ta­tion was screen-prin­ted. A way for the artist to pro­duce an archive of his work while get­ting the word out about the shows.

Invitations to Alexander McQueen fashion shows boast seve­ral spe­ci­fic effects. The first is the repea­ted prin­ting of logis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion on a very light weight paper of 18 gr/m². This paper stock dresses up a cop­per­plate print for the women’s col­lec­tion or is laid over let­ter­press prin­ting using metal font for the men’s collection.

Invitations to Alexander McQueen fashion shows boast seve­ral spe­ci­fic effects. The first is the repea­ted prin­ting of logis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion on a very light weight paper of 18 gr/m². This paper stock dresses up a cop­per­plate print for the women’s col­lec­tion or is laid over let­ter­press prin­ting using metal font for the men’s collection.

For this invi­ta­tion to Miu Miu’s 2018 fall/winter col­lec­tion, it is an ink that pic­tures this illus­tra­ted alpha­bet pri­mer on an ultra-light-weight paper slip­ped into a sleeve with fold-over flaps.

Like a range of samples char­ting the for­mal voca­bu­la­ry employed by M/M (Paris), The World of M/M (Paris) com­piles, archives and uses in new contexts a series of ico­nic signs through a num­ber of dif­ferent sup­ports. Here it’s tem­po­ra­ry tat­toos, pro­du­ced for the show tit­led “C’est Wouf !” at the Air De Paris Gallery.

Like ligh­ting a fuse on Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s first col­lec­tions for Chloé, M/M (Paris) offe­red a series of invi­ta­tions in the form of a match­box. This model bor­rows an illus­tra­tion by Rithika Merchant that appears elsew­here in the collection.

Echoing the subtle gold glints of the show put on for the 2017 fall/winter sea­son of the Acne fashion brand, the M/M (Paris) stu­dio came up with an invi­ta­tion that was first hot-foil stam­ped, then cut out with a laser to create a glim­me­ring mesh effect.

The visual iden­ti­ty and invi­ta­tions of this gal­le­ry spe­cia­li­zed in contem­po­ra­ry pho­to­gra­phy bring toge­ther with one and the same staple bin­ding a tech­ni­cal idiom lin­ked to pho­to­gra­phy and a sur­vey of the work of the artists in ques­tion. These two ele­ments are arti­cu­la­ted in a range of for­mats whose treat­ments are constant­ly changing.

Invited to create the 2007 gree­ting card for the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, M/M (Paris) joi­ned forces with the arti­sa­nal cho­co­late maker Christian Constant to pro­duce a 3D ver­sion of the logo they had desi­gned for the ins­ti­tu­tion in 2005. The edible sign in this case is a com­bi­na­tion of three dif­ferent chocolates.

In 2005, M/M (Paris) crea­ted a visual iden­ti­ty for the Centre National des Arts Plastiques that for­mal­ly conserves the memo­ry of the cockade that Grapus sub­ver­ted in 1984 for CNAP. The new mono­gram plays out like a craftsman’s stamp or punch which, like a hall­mark, cer­ti­fies and pro­motes the artisan’s work. The shape is also a nod to the CNAP’s admi­nis­tra­tive essence and its desi­gn is akin to the switch­back loops of paper­clips hol­ding toge­ther docu­ments and forms. As is often the case, the gree­ting card is a chance to pro­duce an inau­gu­ral object, the logo cut out by laser in blue, white or red metal.

Since 2010, Joris Kritis (with Julie Peeters from 2010 to 2013) has over­seen the visual iden­ti­ty of a space that serves as a scree­ning room, concert hall and event space for Belgian culture, the Beursschouwburg. Two of the invi­ta­tions pro­du­ced over the years boast an amu­sing detail: they can be used as dis­guises thanks to the cut-outs desi­gned for the occa­sion. The first can be tur­ned into a crown to cele­brate the venue’s 50^th anni­ver­sa­ry, while the holes cut out in the second allow you to turn it into a mask for the show devo­ted to muta­tion and metamorphosis.

The gra­phic iden­ti­ty of the art cen­ter and inde­pendent cine­ma Netwerk Aalst com­bines a refe­rence to the his­to­ry of the venue – a for­mer fac­to­ry buil­ding – and a bit of desi­gn play in the stut­te­ring capi­tal N at the start of the name. The acute angle of the cutout motif along the top of the for­mat heigh­tens and unders­cores the nod to the architecture’s history.

The Grateful Dead is the fic­tio­nal dia­ry of Gabriel Krampus, an artist who has sup­po­sed­ly been living for for­ty-four years on a desert island in the Indian Ocean with his wife, a concep­tual artist buried in the sand up to her neck. The work is made up of two covers: the first sets out the basics of the imprint, while the second springs from a carte blanche given to the artist, author of the book.

Thanks to the roun­ded cor­ners of the final docu­ment, the invi­ta­tion to the show ope­ning and raffle eve­ning put toge­ther by Ateliers j&j echoes the tubu­lar fur­ni­ture the stu­dio desi­gns and produces.

Published in conjunc­tion with a show by the artist Mélodie Mousset at Forde, an artist-run space in Geneva, this invi­ta­tion came with a piece of sculp­ture cal­led Hanger that was fashio­ned from scans of 13 of the artist’s organs. The same organs here form a constel­la­tion of pre­cut sti­ckers moun­ted on a uni­form black back­ground that is enli­ve­ned by a slight white-to-yel­low gra­da­tion loo­king like the moving bar of light from a scanner.

Sent out shrink-wrap­ped like a bro­chure, the invi­ta­tion to the Binnen Gallery’s exhi­bi­tion tit­led Showroom was prin­ted over a page from the IKEA cata­logue. It was a way of com­pa­ring and contras­ting, through their dis­tinct objec­tives, two places devo­ted to pre­sen­ting indus­trial design.

The show devo­ted to the pro­tean work, acti­vi­ties and rela­tion­ships of the Swiss artist Serge Stauffer was given an invi­ta­tion that com­piles the names of the other fea­tu­red artists and the theo­re­ti­cal or musi­cal events asso­cia­ted with a solo exhi­bi­tion that was in fact mul­ti-hea­ded. The invi­ta­tion and its pre-cut forms reflect this assem­blage of acti­vi­ties, which can be consul­ted either sepa­ra­te­ly or as a whole.

Invited to desi­gn cheese knives and cut­ting boards for the Maison du Gruyère, HEAD Genève pro­duct desi­gn stu­dents pre­sen­ted their pro­po­sals at the Salone del Mobile, the Milan Furniture Fair. Only logi­cal then that laser cut­ting removes a slice from the invi­ta­tion to the event.

Both a play­ful object and a guide through dif­ferent enclo­sed spaces, the embos­sed mark of a boun­cing ball indi­cates the title of the show put toge­ther by spa­tial desi­gn stu­dents of HEAD Genève for the Salone del Mobile, the Milan Furniture Fair.

For the 2016 visual iden­ti­ty of La Bâtie, the gra­phic desi­gn stu­dio cove­red pho­to­graphs with images of too­th­paste, a way of refre­shing its iden­ti­ty. The invi­ta­tion and its die-cut form fol­low the same principle.

Christmas is a time of ever­green trees and sea­son gree­tings, so why not send a sea­so­nal gree­ting card in the shape of the Little Trees air freshener?

A “flight” of 4 paper stocks that are posed one atop the other, their weight and tex­ture run­ning from hea­vy to light, is held toge­ther using clas­sic three-staple saddle stit­ching. The three staples subt­ly bring to mind the tat­too of three points arran­ged in a tri­angle that signi­fies “mort aux vaches” (the equi­va­lent of “death to the pigs!” in English). The gra­phic desi­gn effec­ti­ve­ly pre­sents the bru­tal text by Manuel Joseph on pri­son tattooing.

For events moun­ted by the COS brand and its dif­ferent part­ners, Claire Huss desi­gned com­mu­ni­ca­tion sup­ports that empha­si­zed sen­si­ti­vi­ty to the tex­tures and treat­ments of dif­ferent paper stocks. The play of cutouts, for­mats, color scales, and trans­pa­ren­cies echoes here the desi­gn of the clothing.

Celebrating the 10^th anni­ver­sa­ry of their brand, COS pro­du­ced a cap­sule col­lec­tion with the aim of pre­ser­ving the mate­rials during the pro­duc­tion of their gar­ments. The gra­phic desi­gner Claire Huss crea­ted two labels that spring to life around the same rec­tan­gu­lar format.

The trans­la­tion from one lan­guage to ano­ther of tech­ni­cal terms in gra­phic desi­gn is often quite tri­cky indeed. Working with B.Books, Claire Huss crea­ted the first bilin­gual French-English glos­sa­ry making it pos­sible to trans­late ter­mi­no­lo­gy that is spe­ci­fic to the profession.

For each of three exhi­bi­tions – Broken Ensemble: War Damaged Musical Instruments (brass sec­tion) by Susan Philipsz, Birmingham Show and  Silks by Samara Scott – held at the Eastside Projects gal­le­ry, the gra­phic desi­gner James Langdon pro­du­ced a 16-page book­let that was prin­ted over views of the pre­ce­ding show. Thus, the third book­let alone serves as a record of the year and its events.

The pro­gram of the Weak Signals, Wild Cards series of per­for­mances, lec­tures, and exhi­bi­tions com­prises a 12-page book­let fea­tu­ring a deli­cate glos­sy coa­ted stock with saddle stit­ching inser­ted in a lepo­rel­lo that is prin­ted on hea­vy-weight pro­tec­tive single face off­set cardstock.

Echoing the dif­fi­cul­ties that arise at a par­ti­cu­lar moment in cur­rent affairs and acting in accor­dance with pro­duc­tion modes and the pos­si­bi­li­ties of get­ting one’s mes­sage across in the public space, Mona Chancogne, Morgane Masse, and Anouk Rebaud put out ano­ny­mous flyers that are ree­di­tions of articles, essays, poems, and comics. These objects, with their dif­ferent colo­red sup­ports, their folds and for­mats that lend their contents their par­ti­cu­lar rhythm and force, are prin­ted on the association’s riso­graph and offe­red to the public via a range of methods that run from the dis­tri­bu­tion of tracts, to sti­ckers in bathrooms, to por­table sculptures.

The Palace of Typographic Masonry was a pure­ly men­tal place that Richard Niessen devo­ted to the value and inter­est of gra­phic desi­gn idioms. Its dif­ferent depart­ments, cabi­nets, and pavi­lions took shape accor­ding to the invi­ta­tions and events that gave them life. The invi­ta­tion also assu­med the role of a busi­ness document/calling card and made it pos­sible to publish a text and create an anno­ta­ted record of gra­phic desi­gn works. In The Asemic Cabinet, the invi­ta­tion is itself the contents of the exhi­bi­tion. A pre-cutout is used to com­pen­sate for the thi­ck­ness of the card­stock and fold its A2 for­mat like the museum maps wide­ly avai­lable in such ins­ti­tu­tions. It also helps to visual­ly com­part­men­ta­lize the sur­face allot­ted to each project.

Devoted to cultu­ral diver­si­ty, De Droomintendant was put toge­ther by the Fonds voor Beeldende Kunsten Vormgeving En Bouwkunst. The book­let accom­pa­nying the event explo­red the theme in its own way by pro­mo­ting uni­ty. Its three saddle stitches indeed hold toge­ther the docu­ments devi­sed befo­re­hand, viz., a pro­gram and des­crip­tion of the pro­jects toge­ther with an inter­ven­tion by an artist on coa­ted stock. While homo­ge­nei­ty is ensu­red thanks to the red and blue gold color treat­ment and a type­face that arti­cu­lates flag motifs in the very body of the let­ters, each prin­ted item contri­butes to the sin­gu­la­ri­ty of the whole through the range of page formats.

For this the­ma­tic review, the two gra­phic desi­gners pro­po­sed a panel of print and treat­ment expe­ri­ments, using dif­ferent spot colors and pre-cutouts, var­nishes and asso­cia­tions of direct images, which lend move­ment and ener­gy to the contents each time yet in dif­ferent ways.

Each year the prin­ter Lenoir Schuring invites a gra­phic desi­gner to create its holi­day gree­ting card. For Niessen and de Vries, this invi­ta­tion was the chance to put to good use the range of pos­si­bi­li­ties offe­red by cutouts, pre-cutouts, and sco­ring to deve­lop a prin­table item that can be fol­ded out, cut out, and moun­ted on a cord.

For the show cele­bra­ting the Dutch artist’s 25 years in the pro­fes­sion, the gra­phic desi­gn duo pro­po­sed an invi­ta­tion with mul­tiple laser cutouts for the let­te­ring, behind which (ori­gi­nal­ly, but lost here) a stu­dio pho­to was slip­ped in.

A hybrid gra­phic desi­gn object, the re-crea­tion of a dis­cus­sion bet­ween the desi­gner Martijn Arts, whose words are done in reflex blue over a white back­ground, and Aysem Mert, a poli­ti­cal science resear­cher who speaks here in the white reserve of a neon red back­ground. The dot­ted lines sug­gest at one and the same time the title of the work, Dotted Lines, the impromp­tu form of the two inter­lo­cu­tors’ exchange, and the tech­nique applied to the pages. The publi­ca­tion can be bro­ken up into indi­vi­dual index cards, allo­wing users to recom­pose the car­to­gra­phy of this dis­cur­sive territory.

Brought in for the 18^th Festival of Chaumont, Richard Niessen, wor­king with Esther de Vries, drea­med up the layout of a typo­gra­phi­cal city where the buil­ding facades are for­med by gra­phic work. Whether fur­ni­ture, bags and trans­port crates, or fes­ti­val docu­ments for the public, the whole visual iden­ti­ty was thought out with the pre­ci­sion of tra­di­tio­nal craft mason­ry. In its stra­ti­fied com­po­si­tion, the invi­ta­tion reuses ele­ments bor­ro­wed from the grids of urban spaces, i.e., facade, street layout, or scaf­fol­ding. Printed by Lenoirschuring, the invi­ta­tion com­bines die-cut forms and two spot-color prin­ting in which the let­te­ring is done in gold reserve prin­ted over black.

The artis­tic mis­sion of the W139 Gallery envi­sions com­mu­ni­ca­tions as a wealth of oppor­tu­ni­ties for new com­mis­sions to be offe­red to select gra­phic desi­gners rather than sim­ply car­rying on with pre-esta­bli­shed prin­ciples. In 2002-03, the gal­le­ry invi­ted De Designpolitie to desi­gn the season’s invi­ta­tions. In the pro­po­sed desi­gn, the stu­dio engi­nee­red a public inter­ven­tion to double up the visi­bi­li­ty that is part and par­cel of exhi­bi­tion invi­ta­tions. At each event, an avai­lable space – avai­lable because it was other­wise neglec­ted – was found in Amsterdam. The space’s fre­sh­ly repain­ted sur­face was then given let­te­ring that spel­led out in Lettera capi­tals the names of the exhi­bi­tion and gal­le­ry. The straight-on pho­to­graph of the dis­played let­te­ring was repro­du­ced on the coa­ted front of the invi­ta­tion, which adopts the same pro­por­tions, while the back dis­played the color in which the infor­ma­tion was prin­ted in reserve in the same Lettera capi­tals. The sin­gu­lar for­mat in each case allo­wed the gal­le­ry to dis­pense with using enve­lopes for these invi­ta­tions. A stamp was sim­ply stuck to the invi­ta­tion, along with an address label for each addressee.

The thea­ter and orches­tra of St. Gallen work toge­ther to pro­duce a joint pro­gram. Like the rest of the two ins­ti­tu­tions’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the pro­gram is desi­gned by Bureau Collective, which is also loca­ted in the city. Because of the absence of any bin­ding, it is the fold that adds its unique note to the object by hol­ding the pages toge­ther and len­ding the whole a for­mat that is easy to car­ry. It also serves to inform rea­ders about how the contents are orga­ni­zed, with tabs that are arran­ged thanks to the asym­me­try and varia­tion of the for­mat of each leaf. When fol­ded out, these leaves offer on the back a full-page space for pho­to­graphs of the shows.

For the sta­tio­ne­ry of the mixo­lo­gist Philipp Grob, the gra­phic desi­gners at Bureau Collective pro­po­sed a suc­ces­sion of refra­mings of a Janine Widget illus­tra­tion. The refra­ming brilliant­ly echoes notions of for­mat as well as scale and volume.

Ueli Reusser is a wood spe­cia­list who foun­ded his wood­wor­king shop in 2014. Screen prin­ted on scraps from his archives, his busi­ness cards func­tion as work samples and high­light the pre­ci­sion with which he treats his work materials.

Perhaps it is because water is trans­pa­rent or because paper isn’t fond of water but the gra­phic desi­gners came up with a set of trans­pa­rent plas­tic sup­ports for the 5^th anni­ver­sa­ry of La danse de Constance, an event held on the shores of the epo­ny­mous lake.

For the gree­ting card of Toulouse’s fine-arts school, the gra­phic desi­gn duo wor­ked out a constel­la­tion of refe­rences lin­ked to Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando and the tele­vi­sion series Miami Vice. The par­ti­cu­la­ri­ty of the docu­ment springs as much from this arti­cu­la­tion of the shapes as the strange blue glints, due to the shine of the ink prin­ted on the gold paper.

For the Swiss hair­dres­sing salon Duett, the Swiss gra­phic desi­gners empha­si­zed the cut of the top edge for each of the for­mats. The cutout, like the zig-zags of pin­king shears, are more of a refe­rence to the pre­ci­sion and crea­ti­vi­ty of the fashion world than the hair­cut spor­ted by Bart Simpson.

A lay-flat Singer sewn bin­ding, an elas­tic band, and an enve­lope are ways for the Swiss gra­phic desi­gn stu­dio to assert the need to handle mate­rials by means of sea­so­nal cata­logues that require an effort to open, done for the desi­gner Stefanie Biggel.

The gra­phic desi­gn col­lec­tive built the visual iden­ti­ty of Franz, a res­tau­rant and tea­room, around two type­faces (Égyptienne – a slab serif type­face – and Didone) prin­ted on a range of beige sup­ports dis­playing refi­ned textures.

Rather than opting for clas­sic card­stock, and wan­ting to avoid the many folds that might occur once the card is slip­ped into a pocket, Bureau Collective pro­po­sed prin­ting DJ Manuel Moreno’s busi­ness card on flexible plastic.

Looking to open a museum for seve­ral years but without having the means to do so, the mem­bers of the Åbäke col­lec­tive brought to life a col­lec­tion of refe­ren­ced art­works thanks to post­cards fea­tu­ring a repro­duc­tion and a cor­res­pon­ding inven­to­ry num­ber. The Victoria and Alfred Museum avoids the usual constraints and exists only in its outreach docu­ments and supports.

Frédéric Teschner fre­quent­ly wor­ked with the archi­tects Pierre Jorge Gonzalez and Judith Haase. A book­let pre­sen­ting 4 of their pro­jects responds to the modes­ty of the for­mat with the sophis­ti­ca­tion of its pro­duc­tion. The whole comes toge­ther in the ser­vice of an opti­mal layout of the content. Blank coa­ted brown card­stock arti­cu­lates the title on the front cover and a cri­ti­cal text on the inside front cover. A fol­ded pos­ter is inser­ted next. Held in place by the loop stitch bin­ding, the pos­ter reveals only its glos­sy side, which fea­tures a color view of each pro­ject. Printed in the same gray spot color used for the text, the matt back has com­ple­men­ta­ry views. Further on, the back inside cover dis­plays bio­gra­phi­cal infor­ma­tion and final­ly the book­let closes on a less focu­sed image of an archi­tec­ture repro­du­ced in the haze of stron­gly scree­ned image.

Invited by Étienne Bernard to show his work in the gal­le­ries of La Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz, Frédéric Teschner posed three ques­tions to visi­tors to the exhi­bi­tion, the cura­tor, and those the cura­tor invi­ted in turn: “Is gra­phic desi­gn a cri­ti­cal tool?” “What is a contem­po­ra­ry gra­phic prac­tice?” And final­ly “Can gra­phic desi­gn free itself from the com­mis­sio­ned work?” The ans­wer was prin­ted out on sheets of paper (5,000 were prin­ted) that were them­selves assem­bled in a single ream. Visitors were allo­wed to take pages with them, which they could slip into a stiff fol­der. This was the divi­sion: the front of the docu­ment was allot­ted to Frédéric Teschner. There he laid out mate­rials he had dug up ear­lier in the MABA libra­ry col­lec­tion; the back fea­tu­red text or images contri­bu­ted by Pierre Bernard, Stéphane Calais, Thierry Chancogne, Jean-Marie Courant, Éric Degoutte, Alexandre Dimos, Alexandra Fau, Clo’e Floira, Vanina Pinter, and Stefan Shankland.

Communications for the 2008–2009 and 2009–2010 sea­sons also forms an area of dis­tri­bu­tion for a public com­mis­sion by the Gennevilliers thea­ter for the pho­to­gra­pher Valérie Jouve. It is a mat­ter of divi­ding up the space allot­ted to tex­tual mat­ter from the pho­to­gra­pher and the gra­phic desi­gner, the expres­sion of ins­ti­tu­tio­nal infor­ma­tion, and final­ly the art inter­ven­tion. The invi­ta­tions were prin­ted on card­stock coa­ted on one side only, which is usual­ly reser­ved for packa­ging. Here the stock is used in reverse. The untrea­ted side is shif­ted to the out­side, where it offers a space for the type­face while hie­rar­chi­zing it. Thus, on the first side the text announ­cing the show in ques­tion and the accom­pa­nying notice, on the back the cre­dits, pro­gram for the year, and men­tion of the institution’s part­ners. When unfol­ded the inside reveals a pho­to by Valérie Jouve in which people, pho­to­gra­phed from behind, appear in their rela­tion­ship to the city.

Tasked with concei­ving the gra­phic desi­gn of the “Period Room” exhi­bi­tion moun­ted by the Palais de Tokyo as part of the European Arts and Crafts Days, SpMillot pro­po­sed taking the bud­get that had been allot­ted to a cata­logue and devo­ting it ins­tead to publi­shing two texts by Henri Focillon that had recent­ly ente­red the public domain. The resul­ting publi­ca­tion was offe­red to visi­tors for free, along with a fold-out bro­chure dis­playing the ele­ments rela­tive to the show, i.e., the intro­duc­to­ry text and notices on the fea­tu­red works. The lat­ter share their serial num­bers, done in Roman nume­rals, with the dif­ferent sec­tions of the book.

An unu­sual off-cen­ter accor­dion fold puts an A3 sheet of paper in an A5 for­mat, the stan­dar­di­zed space for an ins­ti­tu­tio­nal gree­ting card. In this way, a light-weight paper is easi­ly contai­ned in a card dis­playing a coa­ted side before revea­ling uncoa­ted card­stock on the inside. The whole arti­cu­lates the convi­via­li­ty of a mes­sage announ­cing a future pro­gram. A sen­si­tive explo­ra­tion of the issues rai­sed by the mis­sion of the Musée des Arts déco­ra­tifs is achie­ved through the choice of mate­rials, pro­ces­sing, and the use of deco­ra­tive ele­ments, which are them­selves bor­ro­wed from archi­tec­ture and typo­gra­phy, and prin­ted in metal­lic and neon spot colors.

Done in the usual for­mu­la, the busi­ness card here fea­tures on the front the title block that Frédéric Teschner desi­gned for the archi­tects Jordi Garcés, Daria de Seta, and Anna Bonet, and on the back, again in a conven­tio­nal way, the usual infor­ma­tion pro­vi­ded on busi­ness cards. The sole bit of sophis­ti­ca­tion is a blue mar­bling on the edge of the document.

A spot var­nish picks out the names of desi­gners on this image of Pierre Charpin’s Ruban vase. The ges­ture here sug­gests both the Sèvres factory’s his­to­ri­cal connec­tion with the crea­tive indi­vi­duals of the per­iod and the ename­ling of cera­mic ware.

The non-demons­tra­tive com­bi­na­tion of a hea­vy-weight paper, hot foil stam­ping, and dis­creet gluing enabled the gra­phic desi­gner here to bring out a post­card edi­tion of 9 illus­tra­tions by Masanao Hirayama without com­pro­mi­sing their fra­gile state.

To revive people’s view of the monu­ments of La Valette-du-Var that popu­late the dai­ly visual rea­li­ty of those who are regu­lar­ly in the area, Frédéric Teschner tur­ned to the fold-out series of post­cards, a sup­port dedi­ca­ted to the pho­to memo­ry of notable pieces of archi­tec­ture. A mul­tiple bar­rel fold arranges the pho­to­gra­phic depic­tions of the buil­dings, which are repro­du­ced while empha­si­zing the pixe­la­tion from one side of the card to the next card facing it. With this lepo­rel­lo in hand, people are invi­ted to move around the vil­lage, where mar­kings on the ground (repro­du­ced on the back of each image) show them a sin­gu­lar point of view on the buil­ding in question.

To pro­mote the online libra­ry of color pro­files for prin­ting (www.colorlibrary.ch), the gra­phic desi­gners at the Maximage stu­dio pro­duce sup­ports that try out and empha­size the tech­ni­cal fea­tures and rich tones of pos­sible finishes when using a prin­ting pro­cess other than the clas­sic Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black.

In charge of the visual iden­ti­ty of the artists’ resi­den­cy pro­gram La Borne since 2014, Marie Proyart and Jean-Marie Courant have wor­ked around bud­get constraints to make it a struc­tu­ral ele­ment of the center’s print docu­ments. To reduce to a mini­mum the num­ber of pro­jects sent to the prin­ters, the invi­ta­tion also serves as a cover for resi­den­cy publi­ca­tions. The accor­dion fold trans­forms into a bar­rel fold and can accom­mo­date saddle-stit­ched pages within, which make it pos­sible to rele­gate infor­ma­tion on the show ope­ning to the inside of the cover flap.

In the ear­ly days of 2018, through lec­tures, per­for­mances, film scree­nings, rea­ding groups, debates, exhi­bi­tions, and talks, the Studium Generale of the Rietveld Academie focu­sed on the concept of the hap­tic (having to do with the sense of touch). In res­ponse to this ques­tion, echoing the domain name of the event’s web­site, the invi­ta­tion was trea­ted with laser cut­ting, for­ming a cutout handle that allows you to car­ry it like a bag or palette.

Initially obli­ged to use offi­cial stan­dar­di­zed enve­lopes from Noisy-le-Sec to send out invi­ta­tions for the contem­po­ra­ry art cen­ter La Galerie, the gra­phic desi­gner wor­ked around the pro­blem by inte­gra­ting the enve­lope direct­ly into the invi­ta­tion design.

Often done at the last minute, gal­le­ry han­dout sheets for FRAC exhi­bi­tions allow for the pos­si­bi­li­ty of being prin­ted in-house without the dif­fe­rence of qua­li­ty being obvious vis-à-vis the usual off­set prin­ting. The paper, always off­set stock, is never the same and shows hues that are slight­ly dif­ferent. In each case, the mono­chrome prin­ting is done with a new spot color from a range of blacks and grays that are more or less dense and colored.

The German artist Thomas Geiger focuses on the value of art, its com­mit­ment and cir­cu­la­tion. One part of his work is devo­ted to sel­ling his mul­tiple I Want to Become a Millionaire, pro­gres­si­ve­ly num­be­red from 1 to 1,000,000 and sel­ling at 1 euro per copy. He has sold over 32,000 tickets. Math fans will work it out.

Tapped to create the visual desi­gn of the Amsterdam gal­le­ry W139s outreach ini­tia­tives for the 2010-11 sea­son, the two Belgian gra­phic desi­gners based the institution’s iden­ti­ty on the constant appea­rance of two holes that sim­pli­fy sto­ring the docu­ments and an A5 for­mat that is employed dif­fe­rent­ly for each docu­ment. Each piece of prin­ted mat­ter was thus pro­du­ced in a way that is spe­ci­fic to it and to which the gra­phic desi­gn and typo­gra­phy were made to adapt.

Mono.kultur, the Berlin review spe­cia­li­zing in inter­views, devo­ted its 31^st issue to the rea­list work of the Belgian pain­ter Michaël Borremans. Because of the review’s A5 for­mat, the pain­tings repro­du­ced at 1:1 scale on the inside pages only show refra­med details of the pic­tures, whe­reas the cover pre­sents them all at 1:20 scale next to color charts fea­tu­ring the colors most used in his work.

Following Julien Tavelli’s pur­chase of a psy­che­de­lic pos­ter in a Berlin mar­ket that the duo of Maximage espe­cial­ly liked, they deci­ded to com­mis­sion their busi­ness card from the same American gra­phic desi­gner, who spe­cia­li­zed in psy­che­de­lic art and using frac­tals. The result per­fect­ly illus­trates the man­tra that has fol­lo­wed the two gra­phic desi­gners since their start in the pro­fes­sion: “Emotion and technology.”

The 2018 cata­logue of Les Ateliers j&j’s range of tubu­lar fur­ni­ture was done via a stan­dar­di­zed online prin­ting ser­vice, which made it pos­sible to do an effi­cient and effec­tive low-cost pro­duc­tion. Taking into account the palette used by Les Ateliers j&j, the six colors from the RAL color chart were conver­ted here to CMYK.

The adver­ti­sing sup­port Belle eti­quette is a woven flyer crea­ted by the French artist Jean-Michel Wicker that was inser­ted in and dis­tri­bu­ted with a 16-page publi­ca­tion of the same name. The flyer was done as a mini-rug and shown in all its many for­mu­la­tions, whe­ther 1:1‑scale engi­nee­ring dra­wing, 1:1‑scale front-and-back repro­duc­tions, right up to its actual ins­tal­la­tion in the real world.

Chosen to desi­gn the visual iden­ti­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sup­ports of La Villette, Grapus focu­sed on put­ting in place the condi­tions that would allow each actor of the site to have access to a visi­bi­li­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tio­nal inde­pen­dence regard­less of their finan­cial impor­tance. To accom­pa­ny this explo­sion of expres­sion, a gra­phic stan­dards was deli­ve­red, but it was more the nego­tia­tions for a fol­low-up contract that pro­ved deci­sive. For one year all docu­ments issued by the esta­blish­ments making up La Villette were desi­gned in-house by Grapus, which sought with each pro­ject to create a sin­gu­lar object.

With a clear concern for kee­ping things simple, a card prin­ted in a single color is slip­ped into a sheet of color stock, also prin­ted in one color. On the sheet is prin­ted, without any addi­tions, the logo desi­gned by Grapus for Secours popu­laire fran­çais, or French Popular Relief. A dif­fe­rence of for­mat affords a glimpse, just beyond the edge of the card, of 2 exten­ded hands, echoing the hand on the logo. They belong to a desi­gn that Riad Sattouf did for Secours and help to reac­ti­vate the sign and streng­then its universality.

Since 1991, the Ne pas plier Association has been active in the field of edu­ca­tion and wor­king class struggles “so that signs of pover­ty aren’t heigh­te­ned by the pover­ty of signs.” The association’s épi­ce­rie d’art frais, or “fresh art gro­ce­ry” strives to get prin­ted mat­ter out to the public. Designed by Gérard Paris-Clavel, it pro­poses images as tools for appro­pria­tion and dis­cus­sion. In light of both cri­ti­cal situa­tions that can spark pro­test and debate, and hap­py ones in the life of citi­zens and socie­ty, the gra­phic desi­gner pro­poses to anyone who wants to play along to be an actor in their own reac­tion. The weight of the paving stone, the emble­ma­tic object of popu­lar pro­test, joins forces here with the light­ness of the but­ter­fly, which bears a dra­wing on its wings that is also a mes­sage, while depic­ting a short bit of prin­ted text as well.

Mathias Schweizer is a great fan of sen­sual prin­ting mate­rials. He brings toge­ther here on the same thick sup­port a range of effects achie­ved through 3D tex­tu­ring and dra­wing, with a patch of white puff screen-print ink.

For a publi­ca­tion by the artist Florent Dubois, the duo of gra­phic desi­gners pro­du­ced a spraw­ling mul­ti­part docu­ment around a 120 × 176 cm pos­ter, screen-prin­ted and then recut, fol­ded, assem­bled, and wrap­ped around the other docu­ments. The play­ful object goes beyond the sta­tus of the conven­tio­nal mono­graph to become a visual cho­reo­gra­phy of the work.

Ganged up with ano­ther pro­ject by the English gra­phic desi­gner, this fold-out fea­tures a prin­ted selec­tion of 1:1‑scale book trade labels from players in the publi­shing world. Thus, seve­ral dozen book­shops, bin­ders, type­set­ters and so on show their logos on one and the same for­mat. These logos are bor­ro­wed from an online col­lec­tion put toge­ther by Greg Kindall (www.sevenroads.org).

Through encoun­ters and expe­riences, com­mis­sions and pro­jects, the tra­jec­to­ry of M/M (Paris) has acti­va­ted a galaxy of signs whose modu­la­tions have allo­wed the two gra­phic desi­gners to speak a seman­tic sen­sual lan­guage echoing their view of the world and applied to the pro­jects that idiom conveys. In 2016, World of M/M gra­dual­ly took shape in a series of accessories.

Because a name on a busi­ness card doesn’t always pro­vide enough infor­ma­tion about the nature of the ins­ti­tu­tion it repre­sents, Jan & Randoald deci­ded to imi­tate a cor­rec­tion, adding details in red Bic pen in order to reme­dy the problem.

The busi­ness card of the visual arts aca­de­my of Ghent, pre­sen­ting a to-do list of more or less ludi­crous actions to be car­ried out (become a pilot, write a book, or see the auro­ra borea­lis), pro­poses tack­ling true school objec­tives this time on the back.

The busi­ness cards and sta­tio­na­ry of the exhi­bi­tion cura­tor Philippe Van Cauteren dis­play nei­ther ink nor color. The signa­ture on these items is achie­ved with an embos­sing machine. The light relief leaves more room for pos­sible messages.

While it is most often left blank, devoid of any infor­ma­tion, the back of the busi­ness card is used here by Jan en Randoald as a conti­nua­tion of the front. The sup­port thus adapts to the length of Flemish words and names set in all caps.

Brief aan mijn Kind is a stage play that was per­for­med in reac­tion to the “let­ters to my kid” that the poten­tial audience had recei­ved prior to the per­for­mance. The invi­ta­tion, prin­ted on an emp­ty enve­lope, also serves as an invi­ta­tion to write one of those letters.

In 2018 the London Centre for Book Arts laun­ched a sup­port pro­gram for artists’ publi­ca­tions. The pro­ject had to be in an A6 for­mat. Although eco­no­mi­cal, the for­mat can be a bit constric­ting all the same when it comes to ope­ning up the field of print.

Matt Montini is an artist with a fair­ly vague iden­ti­ty crea­ted by Yonatan Vinitsky. Montini “signs” his works with a stamp bea­ring his name.

Featuring the pro­grams of a range of French contem­po­ra­ry art venues, Agenda Commun was publi­shed eve­ry 6 months, lis­ting the pro­gram of exhi­bi­tions and events in France. Like a large part of Fanette Mellier’s work, it is the “jubi­lant” approach to color that dis­plays the iden­ti­ty of these neat and nar­row objects. The divi­sion of France into five geo­gra­phic zones is thus signi­fied by five Pantone spot colors, used either in a single block of flat color or superimposed.

The F.R. David Collection, desi­gned by Will Holder and publi­shed by the gra­phic desi­gner Mike Sperlinger, focuses on the sta­tus of wri­ting in contem­po­ra­ry art, publi­shing essays and repu­bli­shing texts in books with sub­stan­tial num­bers of pages. Summaries, book­marks, poe­tic echoes of cer­tain sub­jects, art­works in their own right, a range of cards are found in the pages of this imprint’s books.

Looking to open a museum for seve­ral years but without having the means to do so, the mem­bers of the Åbäke col­lec­tive tried to set up a col­lec­tion. Here they appro­pria­ted an old stock of post­cards from a bio­lo­gy museum in Stockholm and added their stamp vali­da­ting the qua­li­ty of the object and making the item part of the col­lec­tion of the Victoria and Alfred Museum.

The artist Oliver Griffin takes off on the boring cha­rac­ter of busi­ness cards that are han­ded out left and right, up and down, near and far, to the point where some­times you have a hard time recal­ling not only the per­son who pres­sed the card into your hand but ever having met them in the first place. Griffin thus per­so­na­lizes the sup­port here by adding the date of the mee­ting and his signa­ture before giving it to his interlocutor.

Since busi­ness cards tell us lit­tle about the work of wri­ters and the fields they are cultu­ral­ly active in, the mem­bers of Åbäke pro­duce busi­ness cards tou­ting fake iden­ti­ties that pick up on pro­jects under­way, places visi­ted, or refe­rences that have left their stamp on a writer.

While only a few have the chance to desi­gn offi­cial stamps, the lat­ter can be made a part of a big­ger image. The gra­phic desi­gners of Europa pro­po­sed, for example, a series of prin­ted enve­lopes that play with and use in com­po­si­tions the por­trait of the Queen of the United Kingdom in profile.

The publi­shing house eee­books foun­ded by the gra­phic desi­gner Marius Schwarz puts out publi­ca­tions espe­cial­ly for iPhone. Well aware of the short-term nature of these publi­ca­tions, eee­books pro­duces and dis­tri­butes a free object for the launch of each new work. Despite the tem­po­ra­ry aspect of these items – alu­mi­num can, sti­cker, or box of matches – their mate­ria­li­ty makes it pos­sible to col­lect them just the same.

The gra­phic desi­gner Pierre Vanni deve­lops unique eco­no­mi­cal­ly bound sup­ports as paper­back book bruts de rota­tive, or roughs from the rota­ry press. It is only the staple saddle-stit­ching) inside the quire that makes it pos­sible to bind the pages. After the Traité des exci­tants modernes, the pro­cess was used for the Siestes Électroniques 2016, and sub­se­quent­ly for the visual iden­ti­ty of Toulouse’s Théâtre de la Cité.

These fac­si­mile artists’ busi­ness cards (from the 18^th cen­tu­ry to today) were slip­ped bet­ween the pages of the main publi­ca­tion, which looks at the use of these modest com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools. One can read in them and com­pare dif­ferent approaches to the sub­ject, dif­ferent typo­gra­phic desi­gns, and dif­ferent supports.

The exhi­bi­ted Pangramme type­face pre­sents a fami­ly of cha­rac­ters concei­ved by the gra­phic desi­gner and prin­ted out by a panel of prin­ters, with dif­ferent prin­ting tech­niques and in a great range of sup­ports and for­mats. These dif­fe­rences go back some­times to eco­no­mies of pro­du­cing items toge­ther with other pro­jects, to limi­ted choices of prin­ting sites online, or to com­plex prin­ting tech­niques that come with a given venue.

Pop print object contrasts here with refe­rences to marks and motifs taken from various craft indus­tries. The MAD Paris gree­ting card in the form of a mer­ry-go-round ticket adopts a play­ful approach to shift the his­to­ry and tra­di­tions asso­cia­ted with this museum.

With the assis­tance of the lawyer Agnès Tricoire, the Fédération des pro­fes­sion­nels de l’art contem­po­rain (the Federation of Contemporary Art Professionals, CIPAC) has crea­ted a num­ber of model contracts. The gra­phic desi­gner Fanette Mellier took over the usual visual codes of forms (boxes, rules, dot­ted lines) and pre­prin­ted, in a trans­pa­rent ink in the same color range as the colo­red stock, a layout whose tra­di­tio­nal stiff­ness is sha­ken up as if given a remix. These sup­ports are then prin­ted on, when reques­ted, to serve as func­tio­nal forms that have to be filled in.

At the behest of the Fotokino Gallery (Marseille), Fanette Mellier pro­po­sed a panel of prin­ted docu­ments for­ming a game with prize money, a win­ner per­haps taking home a check filled out by the gra­phic desi­gner her­self. A series of rules aims to acti­vate and connect these objects with prin­ting tech­niques and various formats.

To pro­mote Laterna Magica, an event at the Georges Pompidou Center (Paris), the gra­phic desi­gner here empha­si­zed light by playing off the trans­pa­ren­cy of the paper. The desi­gner made subtle use of the opa­que­ness of a white ink which enabled her to offer power­ful contrasts of light.

Laure Limongi’s text Ensuite j’ai rêvé de papayes et de bananes (Then I Dreamt of Papayas and Bananas) is laid out here in seve­ral direc­tions, crea­ting its own space. This for­ced bro­ken-up rea­ding of the text, which is held in place by a mul­ti-angled dust jacket, echoes the sub­ject deve­lo­ped in the text by the author, name­ly lan­guage, its conser­va­tion, crea­tion, and hence manipulation.

As an inte­gral part of the gra­phic iden­ti­ty of the French tele­vi­sion sta­tion Canal+, the let­te­rhead sta­tio­na­ry offers a subtle play of trans­pa­rent images. The logo laid out in reverse is prin­ted in kno­ckout on the back of the sheet and is legible, thanks to the trans­pa­ren­cy of the paper, on the front, which is left blank. Folded in three, the sheet deli­be­ra­te­ly exposes a color stripe thanks to a slight off­set fold. When the file arri­ved at the printer’s for prin­ting, he was alar­med by the logo “in reverse” and rever­sed it without tel­ling anyone of what he did. Several thou­sand sheets prin­ted up with the printer’s “cor­rec­tion” had to be tossed.

As an inte­gral part of the visual iden­ti­ty of the French tele­vi­sion sta­tion Canal+, the let­te­rhead sta­tio­na­ry offers a subtle play of trans­pa­rent images. The logo laid out in reverse is prin­ted in kno­ckout on the back of the sheet and is legible, thanks to the trans­pa­ren­cy of the paper, on the front, which is left blank. Folded in three, the sheet deli­be­ra­te­ly exposes a color stripe thanks to a slight off­set fold.

To empha­size the fes­tive side of the launch of Bill, a maga­zine publi­shed by Roma and edi­ted by Julie Peeters, the gra­phic desi­gner Joris Kritis used a coas­ter as the invi­ta­tion to the event.

Another spi­noff object that reveals the Fraser Muggeridge Studio’s inter­est in pro­du­cing aty­pi­cal exten­sions of cultu­ral events.

For the exhi­bi­tion cata­logue accom­pa­nying The Sound of Laughter Isn’t Necessarily Funny, which was moun­ted in his native city of Leicester, Jonathan Monk pre­sen­ted this cas­sette fea­tu­ring a musi­cal piece the artist com­po­sed by recor­ding his mother clea­ning his father’s pia­no. The audio cata­logue seems like ope­ning or clo­sing credits.

The deck of playing cards crea­ted by the gra­phic desi­gners of Europa and the artist Ryan Gander fea­ture cards whose 2 sides dis­play figures or num­bers, although they dif­fer from one side to the other. New rules take shape in this way in a game that seems to be a constant dis­co­ve­ry, one that thwarts any rea­ding of the actions of the oppo­site player. For the second edi­tion of the game, the whole deck was prin­ted in nega­tive. Likewise the screen for the game’s accom­pa­nying notice was inverted.

By way of an exhi­bi­tion cata­logue for All the Knives (Any Printed Story on Request) at Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium, the gra­phic desi­gn team here came up with a series of loose cards in the for­mat and paper den­si­ty of a playing card along with the box that a deck of cards might come in. The object allows for both sequen­cing infor­ma­tion in a way that dif­fers from the bound cata­logue form, and an order for consul­ting this “cata­logue” that can be end­less­ly reshuffled.

The great col­lec­tor of artist’s mul­tiples Jonathan Monk pro­du­ced a mul­tiple fea­tu­ring, as has often been the case, part of his col­lec­tion. Here it is pieces by the artists Martin Kippenberger and Alighiero Boetti. A single image is divi­ded among the 56 playing cards and so it can only be read in fragments.

To cele­brate the 50^th anni­ver­sa­ry of the release of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album, an ode to friend­ship, the invi­ta­tion crea­ted by the English artist Jeremy Deller offers a lit­tle helps to “his friends,” the inha­bi­tants of Liverpool. Flashing the card allo­wed, say, a plum­ber or elec­tri­cian to par­ti­ci­pate for free during the ope­ning eve­ning event bet­ween 8:30 pm and 5 am the next mor­ning. Each of the 27 inter­ven­tions during the event was a moment of sha­ring asso­cia­ted with the exhi­bi­tion moun­ted by Metal Culture Liverpool.

In many res­pects a busi­ness card is incom­plete and can qui­ck­ly go out of date with various changes of address. Here, thanks to the absence of any other infor­ma­tion, the artist’s name alone catches the eye. For addi­tio­nal infor­ma­tion, the inter­net beckons.

Devising a fusion of the book­mark for­mat and the mul­tiple folds of a map or fol­dout bro­chure, the gra­phic artist here pro­poses a docu­ment that can be hand­led. It pre­sents the 6 sites run by the Library of Saint-Herblain, from their acti­vi­ties to their address.

Since 2009, in order to sup­port local pro­fuc­tion, acti­vists from Brixton (UK) have been defen­ding a cur­ren­cy that is only accep­ted within the city limits. While the main series of bank­notes was desi­gned by an agen­cy in Brixton, Jeremy Deller and Fraser Muggeridge joi­ned forces to create the bank­note cele­bra­ting the 5^th anni­ver­sa­ry of the currency.

In 1996 these 2 artists pro­du­ced 2 flip books on a Hans-Ulrich Obrist exhi­bi­tion invi­ta­tion, redoing 2 series of pho­tos shot in 1972. One shows the 2 artists facing each other with Georges smo­king a ciga­rette. The other is a sequence of the 2 figures going down some stairs.

Thanks to a cle­ver double paral­lel fold, these English gra­phic desi­gners, along with the Real Foundation, publi­shed a nar­row-for­mat cultu­ral review that comes toge­ther eve­ry 3 months around ques­tions of power. When the publi­ca­tion is ope­ned out, the fold allows the desi­gners to go from 2 to 4 pages, where they create layouts that throw images and text direct­ly together.

To talk about Gabriel Kuri’s sculp­tu­ral work, Oliver Knight and Rory McGrath came up with a rigid space (tur­ned-in cover, i.e., fol­ded-over edges) on which 3 small-for­mat book­lets were arran­ged and pas­ted, thus brin­ging toge­ther the stan­dard for­mat of the exhi­bi­tion cata­logue and the issue of spa­tial­ly laying out the exhi­bi­tion in the page space.

Following a resi­den­cy, Jean-Marc Ballée, toge­ther with Mathias Schweizer, pro­po­sed mixes and remixes of sounds and pho­to­gra­phic images bor­ro­wed from the city of Chaumont to com­pose this audio­ra­ma com­pri­sing a vinyl record, a CD, a book­let, and a pos­ter. The sur­roun­dings of the Haute-Marne are trans­cri­bed in sequen­ced rhyth­mic fragments.

A frequent prac­ti­tio­ner of appro­pria­ting concep­tual or mini­ma­list works of art, the English artist Jonathan Monk has an Instagram account where you can acquire an ori­gi­nal dra­wing done by the artist on the res­tau­rant bill of his most recent meal out. Drawn repro­duc­tions of emble­ma­tic art­works are sold at the price indi­ca­ted on the bill.

At book fairs, the Dutch prin­ter Robstolck offers a small-for­mat book with clas­sic square-back bin­ding. The contents of the book fea­ture an excerpt of the colos­sal inven­to­ry pro­ject being car­ried out by archeo­lo­gists along­side construc­tion of the north-south under­ground line in Amsterdam. Thousands of objects, both recent and very old, have been unear­thed, lis­ted, digi­ti­zed, and final­ly prin­ted out to form a large-for­mat book. Waste sheets (sheets that are prin­ted out when an off­set machine is star­ted up) are recy­cled to pro­duce this sample.

Making use of a cle­ver fusion that blends prin­table files on the same print matrix, Etienne Robial crea­ted for Canal +, one of France’s natio­nal tele­vi­sion sta­tions, fold-out cards whose right-angled motifs dis­play a won­der­ful varie­ty all the same. The arran­ge­ment is such that seve­ral dozen models are possible.

To cele­brate the 40^th anni­ver­sa­ry of the Georges Pompidou Center (Paris), Fanette Mellier desi­gned confet­ti whose huge for­mat alludes to the space’s own vast size. The prin­ted forms take over the gra­phic codes of the docu­ments (type­face, colors, and logo).

Since the ope­ning of this gal­le­ry devo­ted to mul­tiples, the stu­dio of the English gra­phic desi­gner has been pro­du­cing work in col­la­bo­ra­tion with the guest artists invi­ted for each show. From plas­tic bags and badges to the assem­blages of prin­ted sheets of paper, these exten­sions of the show make it pos­sible to achieve com­mu­ni­ca­tions that are varied and imbued with a unique rhythm.

Initially pas­ted to the cen­ter of the front cover of a book on Rafaël Rozendaal’s work publi­shed by Spheres Publication, this len­ti­cu­lar-prin­ted card is a repro­duc­tion that mir­rors as clo­se­ly as pos­sible the slight varia­tions and colo­red move­ments that can be seen on many of the inter­net pages crea­ted by the artist.

Accustomed to using print sup­ports as an addi­tio­nal tool and script for their talks, the mem­bers of Agence du doute use a docu­ment here to clear the way for a pos­sible Crystal Maze, that is, the arti­cu­la­tion of a constel­la­tion of docu­ments, sources, images, and words around a gene­ral sub­ject. The result takes shape as talks, some of which may even be per­for­med. It is inter­es­ting here to offer a docu­ment that is a pre­dic­tion rather than the prin­ted trace of a past event or an invi­ta­tion to a coming one.

As tea­chers at ENSAD in Paris and mem­bers of AGI, André Baldinger and Philippe Millot ima­gi­ned their group show as a chance to do a two-part visual exchange bet­ween the art schools of Amiens and Besançon. Their pact was sea­led with a pos­ter that dis­played on each of its sides the work of each desi­gner. The books desi­gned by SpMillot are laid out in the grid for­med by the criss­cros­sing folds that make it pos­sible to refold the document.

The maga­zine étapes: was shrink-wrap­ped and sent along with a card meant to stif­fen and soli­di­fy the par­cel. To the magazine’s edi­tors Le Club des Chevreuils pro­po­sed doing some­thing with that sup­port, which had never been loo­ked at for itself. Adding nothing but scree­ned ink by the Deux-Ponts prin­ting house was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer a series of goo­dies limi­ted to sub­scri­bers alone while pro­vi­ding a crea­tive space to an invi­ted gra­phic desi­gner for 3 months. The collective’s ini­tial effort was a simple play on words in which the object and its action reha­shed one ano­ther end­less­ly in RGB, which was bro­ken down over time. With the Chaumont fes­ti­val in the offing, the April mai­ling also inclu­ded a vou­cher for a hot dog at the bras­se­rie Chez Nénesse.

At the request of La Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz, Étienne Hervy put toge­ther an exhi­bi­tion, Ne te retourne pas (Don’t Turn Around), that focu­sed on tur­ning over the gra­phic object and the two-step mecha­nisms that fol­low the object’s “acti­va­tion.” In turn, Hervy asked three stu­dios to desi­gn a ver­sion of the invi­ta­tions to the show ope­ning that took advan­tage of one of their pro­jects that had met with ear­lier rejection.

This map is desi­gned to indi­cate the venues invol­ved in the Chaumont fes­ti­val on the map of the city. The use of the 2‑color pro­cess allows the desi­gners to indi­cate both the topo­gra­phy of the place and the fes­ti­val buil­dings in ana­mor­phic repre­sen­ta­tion. On the back, a fold-out pro­gram lists the events sche­du­led for each site. Information is prin­ted in a type­face the stu­dio has been fine-tuning since 2008 in res­ponse to the uses and constraints of map making, viz., com­po­si­tion using small font sizes, an exten­sive range of pic­to­grams, OpenType func­tion for fea­tu­ring num­bers in insets, etc. Le Ceremony is avai­lable from the Optimo type foundry.

The firm Direktrecycling recycles road and mili­ta­ry maps into its line of enve­lopes and office sta­tio­na­ry after eco­lo­gi­cal repro­ces­sing. The prin­ting, some­times with backing on the inside of the firm’s enve­lopes gua­ran­tees pri­va­cy as to their contents. Here the dis­co­ve­ry of car­to­gra­phic motifs when the mis­sive is ope­ned adds a poe­tic ele­ment of surprise.

Placed in the pages of a publisher’s cata­logue, this book­mark demands to be filled out; rea­ders can check off the boxes next to the books they would like to order. Does the object only work when stam­ped and folded?

Thanks to their for­mat (A4) and their mate­rial nature (around 90 gram white off­set paper), the exhi­bi­tion invi­ta­tions of the Berlin gal­le­ry Lüttgenmeijer serve seve­ral func­tions. They are a let­te­rhead sta­tio­na­ry, cover let­ter for press releases, and invi­ta­tion. This mul­tiuse makes it pos­sible to link the dif­ferent types of cor­res­pon­dence and docu­ments prin­ted in house to the gallery’s pro­gram of events. Thanks to the play of color gra­da­tions prin­ted in spot color that shades from one to the next, the col­lec­tion of A4s can be arran­ged chronologically.

Printed on single face off­set card­stock, each invi­ta­tion to the events held at the LIG Art Hall in South Korea has dis­played the gra­phic desi­gner Karl Nawrot’s inter­pre­ta­tion of what was to take place on stage. This space exists on the front of each invi­ta­tion, prin­ted on the coa­ted side of the card. Besides the com­po­si­tion of the texts, the off­set side of the cards is occa­sio­nal­ly varied in order to enli­ven the look of a lan­guage the gra­phic desi­gner doesn’t in fact know.

The repro­duc­tion of the LIG Art Hall stage crea­ted by Karl Nawrot was meant to dis­play inter­pre­ta­tions of future per­for­mances on each invi­ta­tion. Here, howe­ver, the repro­duc­tion shows only two debos­sed lines of text which the glos­sy finish of the stock and the screen of the print ren­der bare­ly visible on this ini­tial document.

This 12.5 x 12.5 square, prin­ted for Karl Nawrot’s book Incomplete Discography, is a 1:1 scale repro­duc­tion of one of the matrices used by Nawrot to do desi­gns on a CD sleeve. The hole, which is seen in all of the matrices for the col­lec­tion, allows the desi­gner to rotate the tool.

The three short Mind Walk book­lets cover the epo­ny­mous exhi­bi­tions that the gra­phic desi­gner Karl Nawrot put toge­ther. Many of the leaves from the docu­ments used dis­play the finesse and atten­tion to detail that the desi­gner brought to these kinds of objects. It should also be noted that 2 of the 3 cen­ter spreads of Mind Walk, Extended Play recreate the square space of the show when laid out.

The pro­tean stage play Bibliomania has its two cha­rac­ters pro­du­cing a range of objects that make it pos­sible to link dif­ferent situa­tions, spaces, and time­frames. Act 1 gave rise to the pro­duc­tion of book­marks on hono­ri­fic rib­bons which book­worms enli­ve­ned and per­so­na­li­zed online. Later, new rib­bons were intro­du­ced in the San Seriffe book­shop (Amsterdam), before a third series of per­so­na­li­zed objects announ­ced an opus at Crédac (Ivry). In the mean­time, 20 towels, per­so­na­li­zed online, were pro­du­ced during Bibliomania Act 2 to orga­nize the dis­cus­sion begun in the Bob’s Your Uncle bar at the Kunstverein (Amsterdam).

Because their business’s sha­red the same cour­tyard, these gra­phic desi­gners were rather natu­ral­ly led to create the visual iden­ti­ty of the Alberte Bar and Restaurant in Ghent. To avoid use­less­ly increa­sing the num­ber of sup­ports, coas­ters are also used as busi­ness cards. A way to ren­der the nature of the busi­ness all the more obvious.

In 2002, Christian Lacroix tur­ned over the gra­phic desi­gn of his fashion house to the duo Antoine + Manuel, i.e., Antoine Audiau and Manuel Warosz. Invitations to Lacroix’s fashion shows were an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the gra­phic desi­gners to work with print stu­dios, hot foil prin­ting spe­cia­lists, and other gif­ted crafts­men, com­pa­rable to the exchanges that connect the fashion desi­gner and the ate­lier, where the desi­gns are craf­ted and assem­bled. Starting with the desi­gn on paper and on screen, seve­ral steps going back and forth bet­ween desi­gner and ate­lier are nee­ded to per­fect the brass male die used in embos­sing the invitation.

For over a dozen years under the direc­tion of Pierre Bal-Blanc, gra­phic desi­gners built up the visual iden­ti­ty of this cen­ter for contem­po­ra­ry art. The direct typo­gra­phic forms, exem­pla­ry of the work of Vier5, were prin­ted in a mul­ti­tude of for­mats and a range of dif­ferent rewor­kings on sup­ports that were occa­sio­nal­ly used on seve­ral scales.

Printed in black on light-weight off­set paper that allows for nume­rous folds without risk of crink­ling, David Grandorge’s pho­to­graphs of the house desi­gned by the archi­tect Marie-José Van Hee are dis­played over 32 pages, thanks to an ini­tial hori­zon­tal fold fol­lo­wed by bar­rel folds in the style of a lepo­rel­lo binding.

The 2015–16 sea­son of the Bijloke music cen­ter in Ghent was concei­ved as a series of encoun­ters bet­ween a venue, via its audience, and the musi­cians who per­for­med there. A badge prin­ted on a sti­cker was desi­gned for each of the fea­tu­red groups, making it pos­sible for the pro­gram to figure on a num­ber of cars around the region, in the same way as and some­times even in place of the sti­ckers and insi­gnia sho­wing sup­port for foot­ball teams.

With its iden­ti­cal for­mat and the pre­cut cen­tral line that cries out to be fol­ded, the busi­ness card for the Emely Van Impe brand bor­rows from the label – which it clear­ly refe­rences – that is sewn into the brand’s wool clothing.

For this 2009 calen­dar adap­ted to a book for­mat, Manuel Raeder deci­ded to use an ink foun­tain, a pro­cess allo­wing him to mix inks in the prin­ter to ren­der each copy unique while moni­to­ring pro­duc­tion time and rhythm.

The three pro­grams of the lec­ture series held at the Studium Generale sug­ges­ted the cuts in the bud­get allo­ca­ted to com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the event. They ran through three sea­sons, from a docu­ment prin­ted using the 3‑color pro­cess on white off­set with a select paper den­si­ty that stretches over its 8 panels, to an A2 for­mat, to a simple A5 for­mat two-side black-and-white print on 90 gram off­set paper by default.

Labt is a Belgian publi­sher spe­cia­li­zed in fur­ni­ture that regu­lar­ly works with desi­gners. Jan en Randoald, in charge of Labt’s visual iden­ti­ty, desi­gned an imprint cal­led Bureau Grotesque. Present at the pla­ting up of the cor­res­pon­ding bro­chure, the two gra­phic desi­gners deci­ded not to trim the deckle edge on the right out­side edge of the prin­ted page. Beyond this lit­tle sty­lish affec­ta­tion, the ges­ture is also a way of empha­si­zing the spe­ci­fi­ci­ty of the imprint, concei­ved by gra­phic desi­gners who are habi­tués of print supports.

The gra­phic desi­gners Jan en Randoald made good use of an exis­ting sup­port, an A4 for­mat on self-adhe­sive paper with cutouts desi­gned to go with a CD-ROM, in order to print and punc­tuate the infor­ma­tion invi­ting rea­ders to dis­co­ver the new 2012 spring/summer col­lec­tion of the clo­thing shop Het Oorcussen. The cir­cu­lar shape of the cutouts and its for­mal like­ness to a sum­mer sun fits in the sea­son of the collection.

White on White is a publi­ca­tion desi­gned by Jean Norad Land, an ana­gram of Jan en Randoald. The pure shine of its white ink on mat coa­ted paper betrays the pre­sence, under the contents prin­ted in CMYK, of the free maga­zine d/academie, laid out by these same gra­phic designers.

The Royal Conservatory of Ghent dis­tri­bu­ted a list of music groups, their per­for­mances and their contact addresses so that they could be boo­ked to play. The docu­ment was desi­gned to allow users to tear off the name sheets thanks to a thin strip of paste on the top of the paper pad.

Inside a white enve­lope, a card with incom­plete infor­ma­tion comes with a second enve­lope done in black, itself contai­ning a new card as well as a third enve­lope boas­ting a simple line dra­wing of a brick pat­tern on yel­low paper. Opening this last enve­lope final­ly informs us about the exact nature of the whole mis­sive. It is an invi­ta­tion to dis­co­ver the new 2011–2012 fall/winter col­lec­tion of the clo­thing shop Het Oorcussen.

The De Tulp (the tulip) Festival is a stroll through the gar­dens and museums of Antwerp, and this pro­gram-book­let, besides its usual func­tion aiming to publi­cize the series of fes­ti­val events, ser­ved as a memen­to of the tour as well as an admis­sion ticket. A space was reser­ved on the front and back covers for the stamp espe­cial­ly desi­gned for the event, from each of the 12 part­ne­ring venues.

Like the gra­phic desi­gners Jan en Randoald, who sign each of their emails with a dif­ferent image and who desi­gned their own visual iden­ti­ty, the Ghent event plan­ners Handelsreizigers in Ideeën are able to per­so­na­lize each ele­ment of the firm’s sta­tio­na­ry thanks to a series of stamps. The stamps boast a desi­gn with a thick line and screen that offers a stri­king contrast with the deli­ca­cy of the mono­spa­ced font selec­ted for tex­tual infor­ma­tion. The final iden­ti­fying ele­ment, a pair of stan­dard bin­der holes, is pun­ched through all docu­ments, making sto­rage easier.

Printed on a light-weight recy­cled paper, the flyers for Ghent’s art book fair bor­row the move­ment of a flag shape whose white ghost­ly image pushes the text out of the way. Despite a print run of 1000 copies, the gra­phic desi­gners chose digi­tal prin­ting that allo­wed them to repro­duce a dif­ferent stage of the ani­ma­tion on each copy, ano­ther form of sin­gu­la­ri­ty that runs through the series.

With the stu­dents of ÉSAC Cambrai, Mathias Schweizer car­ried out a pro­ject that invol­ved dra­wing from memo­ry and reap­pro­pria­ting logos. The pro­ject com­pi­led a col­lec­tion of expe­ri­ments bound in adhe­sive white mus­lin, whose rough sur­face creates a nice contrast with the glos­sy coa­ted paper and the neon pink print.

In 2015, the new direc­tor of ESAC Cambrai, Jean-Michel Géridan, wor­king with his stu­dents and Mathias Schweizer, a tea­cher at the school, put toge­ther a desi­gn pro­ject for a holi­day gree­ting card that played with its for­mat. The school, cri­ti­ci­zed for fai­ling to get grea­ter visi­bi­li­ty for its acti­vi­ties and make them more wide­ly known, sent to the Ministry of Culture a gree­ting card that conju­red up a bus shel­ter. Unable to car­ry out this ini­tia­tive with all of its part­ners, the school also offe­red two other cards which, like a pos­ter, fea­tu­red a col­lec­tion of recy­cled tools from the cold yet gene­rous world of cho­co­late. An inven­to­ry, drawn from memo­ry, of the logos that the Cambrai stu­dents would pass on their way to school is also used on the cover of the card done in the most elon­ga­ted for­mat possible.

Roose & Ternier is a stu­dio spe­cia­li­zed in fine cabi­net­work. Echoing the mark left on wood by a cir­cu­lar saw, a thin rec­tan­gu­lar cutout unders­co­ring the craftsmen’s names and address is the studio’s sole signa­ture on its let­te­rhead stationary.

Thanks to an accor­dion fold com­bi­ned with an asso­cia­tion of solid blocks of flat colors and type­faces (Jaako and Grotesque 6 from the A is for Apple type foun­dry; Traula by Bureau Brut), the invi­ta­tion sparks the meta­pho­ri­cal fee­ling of what it announces, an assem­blage of objects and gra­phic expressions.

Toute matière étran­gère est bonne, et même toute bonne matière est etran­gère (All forei­gn mat­ter is good, just as good mat­ter is forei­gn) was the title of a sym­po­sium orga­ni­zed by the fine arts school of Toulouse. The title became the stuff of a typo­gra­phic image wor­ked in asci and hot-foil stam­ped. Legibility is serious­ly alte­red in the second half of the document.

The object falls somew­here bet­ween an inves­ti­ga­tion and a trea­sure hunt, desi­gned to allow one to pre­serve a trace of the film scree­nings put toge­ther by Jemma Desai. The gra­phic desi­gner pro­po­sed objects that work by addi­tion and mani­pu­la­tion – while offe­ring only frag­men­ta­ry or trun­ca­ted infor­ma­tion on the subject.

Production type is a type foun­dry crea­ted in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Levée. The foun­dry is able to har­mo­nize the publi­ca­tion of its samples and com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­ducts by regu­lar­ly using the DIN A5 for­mat, on which a stan­dard 2‑hole desi­gn allows one to col­lect and conserve in a bin­der desi­gned by Julien Lelièvre. In this strict­ly defi­ned fra­me­work, desi­gning is entrus­ted to gra­phic desi­gners selec­ted by the foun­dry in terms of the spe­ci­fic pro­ject: Emmanuel Besse, Building Paris, Superscript², or Julien Lelièvre.

To conti­nue their work toge­ther, first begun with the invi­ta­tions to the Christian Lacroix fashion shows, Antoine + Manuel and the Ateliers André pro­du­ced a win­ter-the­med card in which the embos­sing plate was engra­ved by hand and its effects are enhan­ced with gil­ding and various drawn motifs.

After desi­gning the logo for the Manufacture natio­nale de Sèvres in 2005, Antoine + Manuel fol­lo­wed the ins­ti­tu­tion when, in 2010, it and the French cera­mics museum, the Musée natio­nal de la céra­mique, joi­ned forces in Sèvres – Cité de la Céramique. This holi­day gree­ting card heralds their union on the three panels of its two bar­rel folds, i.e., the two facades frame the image that is now com­mon to both ins­ti­tu­tions. The laser-cut is empha­si­zed by the prin­ting. On the front, the deli­ca­cy of the lace­like cut sug­gests the exper­tise and know-how that is shown in tra­di­tio­nal arts and crafts. On the back, the traces of com­bus­tion remind us that cera­mics is part of those arts long asso­cia­ted with fire and firing.

Driven by its artis­tic mis­sion and poli­ti­cal convic­tions, the Grapus col­lec­tive is known for its use of images construc­ted so as to give a voice to the anti-esta­blish­ment debate in the public sphere. The group creates a galaxy of “lit­tle mate­rials,” inclu­ding sti­ckers, post­cards, and badges meant to be reap­pro­pria­ted by one and all in a minor act of com­pli­ci­ty. Here a die-cut is used for a post­card that takes the shape of a fol­ded news­pa­per on which the word “lisez” (read) is hand­writ­ten before the trun­ca­ted title of L’Humanité, the “cen­tral organ of the French Communist Party.” The news­pa­per is imbued with the fami­lia­ri­ty of an object from dai­ly life – and the life of a daily.

To play with dis­sa­tis­fac­tion as a way of connec­ting with the object – the pro­gram of the 2007 Chaumont Festival cer­tain­ly looks unfi­ni­shed. The trim­mer hasn’t been used to remove the print mar­kings from the paper and cut all the pages. Faced with that imper­fec­tion, rea­ders have to damage the docu­ment even more and tackle the saddle stitch hiding the ico­no­gra­phic material.

Pigeons throng in a chao­tic car­nage unbro­ken by a single typo­gra­phi­cal ele­ment – and so we are imme­dia­te­ly confron­ted with the story’s shab­by mar­gi­nal urban rea­li­ty. A pho­to­graph by Maxime Ballesteros wraps around this novel by Jérôme Bertin from the front cover to the back. The book, desi­gned by Thermidor, is pres­sed bet­ween mar­gins that are redu­ced to the bare mini­mum, and confi­ned within its ver­ti­cal for­mat and limi­ted num­ber of pages.

The out­lines of two spar­rows super­im­po­sed one over the other – a pair of birds busy in their nest are pic­tu­red thanks to a die-cut com­bi­ned with two asym­me­tric bar­rel folds. Thanks to end treat­ment, the object avoids any over­ly quick res­ponse to the ques­tion in quotes that is posed on the cover (Du Breuil, what exact­ly is it?). Three inside cover panels relate the cutout forms to let­te­ring prin­ted in reserve on a reflex blue back­ground, a star­ry night as the pea­ce­ful set­ting for a day­care cen­ter that the depart­men­tal coun­cil of Seine-Saint Denis makes avai­lable to parents.

A form of indus­trial prin­ting that is among the most rudi­men­ta­ry, the black rota­ry press on news­print here is given a double saddle-stitch bin­ding and its final for­mat using a trim­mer. The publication’s cover is a screen-prin­ted four-color pro­cess on adhe­sive vinyl which is trim­med using a cut­ting die. Following Clint Eastwood in his movie High Plains Drifter, visi­tors can embark on a dis­co­ve­ry of the city of Chaumont’s col­lec­tion of contem­po­ra­ry pos­ters as Jean-Marc Ballée and Étienne Hervy arran­ged them in the gal­le­ries of the Galerie Nationale de la Tapisserie in Beauvais.

Some 50 art ins­ti­tu­tions coor­di­nate their acti­vi­ties and pro­grams within d.c.a., a French asso­cia­tion dedi­ca­ted to deve­lo­ping and pro­mo­ting contem­po­ra­ry art cen­ters. The visi­bi­li­ty of the net­work and its ini­tia­tives deter­mines the visi­bi­li­ty of their sub­ject. Here Frédéric Teschner uses a low-defi­ni­tion type­face, without the four-color pro­cess and illus­tra­tions of the art­work, and a rough bit­map screen. He arranges these com­po­nents in simple docu­ments whose spare desi­gn doesn’t pre­clude his modi­fying its effects, an invi­ta­tion slip­ped into a fol­ded sheet of paper, for example, or a book­let whose asym­me­tric end treat­ment reveals the colors of the dif­ferent paper stocks within. This kind of mate­ria­li­ty com­pen­sates for the d.c.a.’s lack of a pre­ci­se­ly cir­cum­scri­bed area of acti­vi­ty, making it pos­sible to ground its ini­tia­tives in the events and spaces where it is present.

In charge of gra­phic desi­gn at the publi­shing house of Le Feu Sacré, the duo Bizzarri-Rodriguez desi­gned Les Feux Follets, an imprint that spe­cia­lizes in short essays. For money-saving rea­sons, the use of paper for­mats was opti­mi­zed to be able to occa­sio­nal­ly print on a single sheet of paper, which becomes a book once it is fol­ded, cut, and trim­med. The dif­ferent titles are prin­ted in series (that is, gan­ged-up) in order to com­bine seve­ral covers on the same print support.

The work of Ed Fella deals with ver­na­cu­lar type­faces, approa­ched as an essen­tial com­ponent of the American land­scape and an ele­ment of wri­ting that the gra­phic desi­gner has been wor­king with for 20 years in flyers, a recur­ring for­mat for him. With its front and back head-to-foot prin­ting in black on cheap stock boas­ting two bar­rel folds, the object indis­cri­mi­na­te­ly serves as the sup­port for Detroit Focus Gallery com­mu­ni­ca­tions, or to announce and com­ment on (often after the fact) the arri­val of an invi­ted gra­phic desi­gner at Calarts, or to tout this or that ini­tia­tive by Fella himself.

In 2010 I Swear I Use No Art At All was publi­shed, a mono­graph by Joost Grootens that is laid out so as to show 10 years of work through 100 books, that is, 18,788 pages, desi­gned by the stu­dio. The book qui­ck­ly sold out and was repu­bli­shed the fol­lo­wing year in an expan­ded edi­tion fea­tu­ring the 101^st book, I Swear I Use No Art At All itself. The addi­tio­nal work was sub­jec­ted to the same cri­ti­cal eye it had tur­ned on its own contents ear­lier, i.e., the net­work of people who col­la­bo­ra­ted on the pro­jects, the rela­tion­ship of text to image, color spec­trum, type­face choices, alte­ra­tions of the grid, and the various treat­ments effec­ted after prin­ting. Designed to open like a map, the docu­ment indeed maps out the first-edi­tion sales around the world.

The pro­tean stage play Bibliomania has its two cha­rac­ters pro­du­cing a range of objects that make it pos­sible to link dif­ferent situa­tions, spaces, and time­frames. Act 1 gave rise to the pro­duc­tion of book­marks on hono­ri­fic rib­bons which book­worms enli­ve­ned and per­so­na­li­zed online. Later, new rib­bons were intro­du­ced in the San Seriffe book­shop (Amsterdam), before a third series of per­so­na­li­zed objects announ­ced an opus at Crédac (Ivry). In the mean­time, 20 towels, per­so­na­li­zed online, were pro­du­ced during Bibliomania Act 2 to orga­nize the dis­cus­sion begun in the Bob’s Your Uncle bar at the Kunstverein (Amsterdam).

Despite having to work with a limi­ted bud­get, for an event invi­ting par­ti­ci­pants to think about urban space the OK-RM stu­dio pro­po­sed a col­lec­tion of docu­ments prin­ted in black on gray recy­cled stock and a black/red prin­ting on glos­sy coa­ted stock. This inter­con­nec­tion of tex­tures, unders­co­red by trans­la­tions in 5 lan­guages, makes plain the range and varie­ty of the exhi­bi­tion, debate, and wor­king space.

SpMillot has desi­gned two books for Éditions Cent Pages. The first is an edi­tion of Félix Fénéon’s Nouvelles en trois lignes (publi­shed in English as Novels in Three Lines), and the second serves as a cata­logue of the Éditions Cent Pages publi­ca­tions, with the pro­verbs of Paul Éluard and Benjamin Péret. A single prin­ting and the same bin­ding pro­du­ced the two joi­ned works until a trim­mer sepa­ra­ted them. Apart from the paper and the screen print on the cover, not a trace of the single prin­ting lin­king these Siamese publi­ca­tions remains.

When fol­ded, the two A5 sides of this object break down the French word for night, Nuit, into two syl­lables in large-font black type on white stock. The five accor­dion folds extend for near­ly a meter of paper that is coa­ted on one side only. The reverse is glos­sy and conti­nues the “blin­king” type­face while the use of reserve prin­ting and the reap­pea­rance of black on white plays like the pas­sing from day to night… and final­ly dawn. With a single type­face and point size, the mat front scrolls out – like a rigo­rous­ly orga­ni­zed list, simple and smart loo­king – the pro­gram put toge­ther by MAC/VAL for the late-night museum fes­ti­val La Nuit des musées in 2016.

This tote bag was pro­du­ced as a way to label the monu­men­tal sculp­ture that the artist Guillaume Boulley crea­ted from bales of straw in the middle of a field.

In 2015, when Spassky Fischer took over the visual iden­ti­ty of Mucem (the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations), which had ope­ned just two years ear­lier, all of its fair­ly limi­ted com­mu­ni­ca­tions mate­rials were scat­te­red over a varie­ty of sizes and pro­por­tions. The stu­dio put the maps, pro­grams, and docu­ments rela­ting to museum tours in a for­mat whose ver­ti­ca­li­ty acts as an iden­ti­fying mar­ker. The mate­rials now com­bine the three com­po­nents of the venue’s gra­phic idiom, i.e., text done in Neue Haas, flat uni­fied blocks of color, and ico­no­gra­phy. The spe­ci­fic layouts of the covers of these clo­sed for­mats com­ple­ment the title while sin­gu­la­ri­zing the use of each docu­ment. Adapted to content and its func­tion, their appli­ca­tion plays with sto­ry­lines of folding/unfolding and various treat­ments after prin­ting which help to set them off and engage our attention.

Invitation, pro­gram, and exhi­bi­tion map for a show taking place in disu­sed shop win­dows of the city of Nevers fea­ture a cutout and fold that allow you to consult the item as a book­let but also as a simple card.

For the artist Liz Magic Laser’s exhi­bi­tion, the two gra­phic desi­gners bor­ro­wed the facial expres­sion dia­grams of François Delsarte, the tea­cher, musi­cian, and ori­gi­na­tor of the Delsarte method. These dra­wings, prin­ted on the blank back of the invi­ta­tion, com­ple­ment the reflec­tive front, where the per­son invi­ted to the event can see her or his own face.

Often, the back of an invi­ta­tion is taken up by a pho­to­gra­phic repro­duc­tion of a piece from the show being announ­ced. For Consortium, Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak sub­sti­tute a quo­ta­tion they select and lay out in one of their type­faces and print off using ther­mo­gra­phic prin­ting, while the front of the card, prin­ted in off­set, bears all of the usual infor­ma­tion. In this way Consortium invi­ta­tions can be seen as their own space within the art cen­ter, where M/M (Paris)’s typo­gra­phic work has been exhi­bi­ted and archi­ved over the years. The simple dif­fe­rence in prin­ting the two sides of the invi­ta­tion is enough to shape and alter the addressee’s view and rea­ding of the card.

The gra­phic desi­gner Pierre Vanni deve­lops unique, eco­no­mi­cal­ly bound sup­ports as paper­back book bruts de rota­tive, or roughs from the rota­ry press. It is only an actual claw inside the quire that makes bin­ding the pages pos­sible (bin­ding that works by tea­ring the paper in fact). After the Traité des exci­tants modernes, the pro­cess was used for the Siestes Électroniques 2016, and sub­se­quent­ly for the visual iden­ti­ty of Toulouse’s Théâtre de la Cité.

Two asym­me­tri­cal bar­rel folds lay out an A4 sheet of paper in the stan­dar­di­zed for­mat of an invi­ta­tion. The lar­ger panel, an A5, bears the essen­tial infor­ma­tion rela­tive to the announ­ced event, which is expan­ded thanks to the fold and the four columns allot­ted to the venue program.

SpMillot has desi­gned two books for Editions Cent Pages. The first contains Stig Dagerman’s dai­ly post­ings, Billets quo­ti­diens, while the second repro­duces an excerpt from Sodom and Gomorrah where Marcel Proust conjures up the figure of Céleste Albaret, his hou­se­kee­per and secre­ta­ry. A single prin­ting and the same bin­ding pro­du­ced the two works, joi­ned until a trim­mer sepa­ra­ted the two. These Siamese twins remain entan­gled, howe­ver, thanks to a poem dedi­ca­ted to Céleste that is prin­ted stradd­ling the last page of each. If it is the fold (by hand) that makes the book, then Céleste contains one bet­ween her lines.

From 1993 to 2016, the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam – SMBA was a plat­form devo­ted to contem­po­ra­ry art that the Stedelijk Museum main­tai­ned in the heart of the down­town. Published eve­ry seven weeks, the SMBA news­let­ter took on its defi­ni­tive look in 2006 when Armand Mevis & Linda Van Deursen made it over as an A5 book­let prin­ted in black, except for the cover title, which was prin­ted in spot color. The object was given its final touch with a pre­cut seal allo­wing rea­ders to easi­ly remove it. In the end, it would be the direc­tor of the ins­ti­tu­tion who par­ted with the publi­ca­tion in the most radi­cal of ways, due to cuts in the bud­get. The object conti­nues to be publi­shed exact­ly as before, but shorn of its adhe­sive strip.

For the 23^rd Festival of Chaumont, Jean-Marc Ballée crea­ted a series in the style of Playboy car­toons from the 1950s and ‘60s. The dra­wings mix figures asso­cia­ted with Chaumont-the-fes­ti­val and cha­rac­ters from Chaumont-the-town. These images were then embo­died in the for­mat and mate­rials used in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion sup­ports they enli­ve­ned. Rather than ins­ti­tu­tio­nal expres­sions, these objects bor­row their beha­vior from the alter­na­tive. The invi­ta­tion stuck to the model of VIP galas and adop­ted both a thi­ck­ness and a fla­shi­ness that encou­ra­ged the reci­pients to hold on to it. On the back, the mes­sage was conveyed like a bit of per­so­na­li­zed atten­tion via a hand­writ­ten text. Part of the print run, moreo­ver, kept this side blank, pro­vi­ding the fes­ti­val direc­tor with a plain note­card wor­thy of her or his post.

In Amsterdam, Henriëtte van Egten, Rúna Thorkelsdóttir and Jan Voss have kept the flame alive at Boekie Woekie, their book­shop devo­ted to artist’s books and publi­ca­tions since 1986. Books that are sold are par­ce­led up in enve­lopes espe­cial­ly desi­gned for this pur­pose by Jan Voss, using various types of paper that have caught his eye.

A 1:2.5‑scale bro­chure fea­tures the double-page spreads desi­gned by the Joost Grootens Studio, which is spe­cia­li­zed in archi­tec­ture books and atlas desi­gn. While the black was pre­ser­ved, a fluo­res­cent spot color was sub­sti­tu­ted for the ori­gi­nal color addi­tions, evin­cing these desi­gners’ focus on devi­sing not rea­lis­tic depic­tions but rather trans­la­tions arti­cu­la­ted around a book’s contents. The use of loop stit­ching makes plain the inten­tion to conti­nue the series without neces­sa­ri­ly fol­lo­wing through on the idea.

For their 2016 holi­day gree­ting card, M/M (Paris) sent out to their friends a hard­back enve­lope or sleeve that contai­ned an embroi­de­red badge. The white sleeve allo­wed the two gra­phic desi­gners to include a friend­ly gree­ting. The cen­ter of the badge bears the duo’s mono­gram hot stam­ped in black and gold over embos­sing. The inside sur­face is prin­ted like the cloth used by the haute cou­ture fashion houses to back their pieces. In September of the same year, Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak exhi­bi­ted World of M/M, a cap­sule col­lec­tion of bags joint­ly desi­gned with Tokishi. The bags are deco­ra­ted with the same badges on the out­side while the inside fea­tures a cloth lining logoed with a motif like the one seen on their holi­day gree­ting card.

The Centre inter­na­tio­nal de recherche sur le verre et les arts plas­tiques is the only French art cen­ter that is sole­ly a pro­duc­tion site and the­re­fore exhi­bi­tions of the center’s pro­jects are always held at other venues. This logis­ti­cal par­ti­cu­la­ri­ty has influen­ced its visual iden­ti­ty, which uses a set of visual ele­ments for each of the center’s prin­ted sup­ports. The spon­sors’ bro­chure, for example, fea­tures a selec­tion of views of the work­shop, exhi­bi­tions, and the col­lec­tion of works.

The Bizzarri-Rodriguez stu­dio deals with the print mate­rials used in com­mu­ni­ca­tions for Le Cyclop. For the site’s pro­grams, the two gra­phic desi­gners came up with a straight­for­ward contrast of mate­rials, glos­sy coa­ted stock or rough untrea­ted card­stock. The treat­ment is also a sly nod to the often frank and una­dor­ned mate­rials that the artist Tinguely com­bi­ned in his sculptures.

The Bizzarri-Rodriguez stu­dio deals with the print mate­rials used in com­mu­ni­ca­tions for Le Cyclop. The invi­ta­tions group toge­ther seve­ral show ope­nings and exhi­bi­tions, which can be sepa­ra­ted thanks to a per­fo­ra­ted line.

For the Centre National des Arts Plastiques’s 2006 holi­day gree­ting card, Philippe and Sophie Millot pro­du­ced a conjoi­ned object, a hot-stam­ped pair of eyes with a per­fo­ra­ted line run­ning bet­ween them that allows you to sepa­rate the card into two bookmarks.

Working in the “tea­chable moment” mode, Étienne Bernard and Aurélien Mole pro­po­sed a show in which the usual refe­rences sum­mo­ned by art ins­truc­tion are com­pa­red and contras­ted. The invi­ta­tion reworks at scale frag­ments of the pos­ter, which repro­du­ced images and docu­ments gathe­red by the gra­phic desi­gners in refe­rence to the fea­tu­red artists.

Following in the wake of the famous Bulletin, publi­shed by the Dutch gal­le­ry Art & Project from 1968 to 1989, CNEAI and the New York col­lec­tive Continuous Project invi­ted new artists to work with a form of the object that is simi­lar in for­mat, i.e., a blank A3 prin­ted in black with cross/accordion fold.

Since she ope­ned her gal­le­ry 1989, Florence Loewy has desi­gned a bian­nual book­let fea­tu­ring a detai­led des­crip­tion of the works and mul­tiples cur­rent­ly on sale. An artist has been invi­ted to do the cover of the publi­ca­tion each time. For this edi­tion, Michelangelo Pistoletto pro­po­sed “31 years in the mirror.”

For seve­ral years, an affi­ni­ty for post-prin­ting work, along with gil­ding and embos­sing, was the hall­mark of Antoine + Manuel’s gra­phic desi­gns for Christian Lacroix’s haute cou­ture col­lec­tions. The engra­vers of Atelier André and Atelier Gamar played a part in this approach, hand-engra­ving the brass male dies for embos­sing the invi­ta­tions to fashion shows.

The pro­tean stage play Bibliomania has its two cha­rac­ters pro­du­cing a range of objects that make it pos­sible to link dif­ferent situa­tions, spaces, and time­frames. Act 1 gave rise to the pro­duc­tion of book­marks on hono­ri­fic rib­bons which book­worms enli­ve­ned and per­so­na­li­zed online. Later, new rib­bons were intro­du­ced in the San Seriffe book­shop (Amsterdam), before a third series of per­so­na­li­zed objects announ­ced an opus at Crédac (Ivry). In the mean­time, 20 towels, per­so­na­li­zed online, were pro­du­ced during Bibliomania Act 2 to orga­nize the dis­cus­sion begun in the Bob’s Your Uncle bar at the Kunstverein (Amsterdam).

The pro­tean stage play Bibliomania has its two cha­rac­ters pro­du­cing a range of objects that make it pos­sible to link dif­ferent situa­tions, spaces, and time­frames. Act 1 gave rise to the pro­duc­tion of book­marks on hono­ri­fic rib­bons which book­worms enli­ve­ned and per­so­na­li­zed online. Later, new rib­bons were intro­du­ced in the San Seriffe book­shop (Amsterdam), before a third series of per­so­na­li­zed objects announ­ced an opus at Crédac (Ivry). In the mean­time, 20 towels, per­so­na­li­zed online, were pro­du­ced during Bibliomania Act 2 to orga­nize the dis­cus­sion begun in the Bob’s Your Uncle bar at the Kunstverein (Amsterdam).

Each year, the Lézard Graphique prin­ting house entrusts a guest gra­phic desi­gner with the desi­gn of its holi­day gree­tings cards, which take the shape of a calen­dar. Here Jean-Marc Ballée respon­ded to their invi­ta­tion with a series of sti­ckers, which were sent out in an enve­lope made of screen-prin­ted card­stock. As if exca­va­ted from various under­ground and coun­ter­cul­ture spaces in the United States, this heap of stones, pre­cious or not, forms a mine­ral land­scape, a natu­ral envi­ron­ment for the lizard (lézard in French), a col­lec­tion of rocks like the kind chil­dren pick up from the ground.

In desi­gning the com­mu­ni­ca­tions for Une autre conspi­ra­tion, a show moun­ted by ENSBA Lyon, HGB Leipzig and BF15 Lyon, the two gra­phic desi­gners took over the riso­graph of Lyon’s École des beaux arts and made the most of the A3 for­mat, divi­ding it into six strips. The new for­mat, which could be slip­ped into an inside coat pocket without dif­fi­cul­ty, could also be cut up even fur­ther into small tickets that could be dis­tri­bu­ted by anyone: “send this let­ter to ten people you know.”

Since 2001, SpMillot has been desi­gning all the books making up the Cosaques imprint of Editions Cent Pages. A book­mark fea­tu­ring all the publi­shed titles is prin­ted on single-side coa­ted hea­vy-weight card­stock. The thi­ck­ness and rigi­di­ty of the stock are a pro­blem for the per­fect bin­ding (clas­sic square-spine paper­back bin­ding) used for the books publi­shed under this imprint.

Just as they appear on the cover of their mono­graph M/M (Paris) de M à M, the pro­files of Mathias and Michaël are seen on the sides of this double medal­lion, each side bea­ring a reper­to­ry of 26 cha­rac­ters and works by the two. Designed by M/M (Paris) and pro­du­ced by the crafts­men of the engra­ving stu­dio Monnaie de Paris, these medal­lions were avai­lable at six dis­tri­bu­tors along the route of the 2013 Nuit Blanche event. Each contai­ned a sil­ver medal­lion with the two faces on the same piece.

To pro­mote the web­site of the Bordeaux foot­wear spe­cia­list Michard Ardiller, Benoît Cannaferina sim­ply used embos­sing on paper to refe­rence the labe­ling of the lea­ther used in the shoes.

Echoing the Beyond These Walls show that focu­sed on put­ting the very archi­tec­ture of the South London Gallery in play, the OK-RM stu­dio pro­po­sed an invi­ta­tion-pro­gram with its own play­ful archi­tec­ture. Tapping into the tex­tures of pos­ter stock (the document’s reverse colo­red blue), a fol­ded asym­me­tric accor­dion fold, and an inser­ted gray invi­ta­tion, the desi­gners obtai­ned a jol­ting rhythm that runs through their pre­sen­ta­tion of the information.

The Dutch gra­phic desi­gner Karel Martens crea­ted his per­so­nal busi­ness card by prin­ting his name and address using a stamp on sti­cking plas­ters (Band-Aids, for American readers).

As tools that are part of the artist Adrian Piper’s long-term per­for­mance, these two cards were dis­tri­bu­ted in two situa­tions dea­ling with iden­ti­ty. The first was han­ded to indi­vi­duals who used racist lan­guage within the artist’s hea­ring. The second, to any indi­vi­dual who tried to pick up Piper when she was in a bar alone.

The visual iden­ti­ty of the Centre d’Art Contemporain of Brétigny-sur-Orge took shape thanks to a long-term resi­den­cy by Coline Sunier and Charles Mazé. The two deve­lo­ped a site-spe­ci­fic gra­phic style through the desi­gn and use of two type­faces, the names of which draw on the RER rapid tran­sit net­work lin­king Brétigny and Paris. The BALI type­face is sans serif and sans contrast, and is used to trans­cribe mes­sages. LARA, on the other hand, has been gro­wing with the suc­ces­sion of pro­jects at CACB, each of which is seen as a chance to acti­vate addi­tio­nal characters/symbols which the two desi­gners bor­row from the center’s visual envi­ron­ment. Printed out in the busi­ness card for­mat, invi­ta­tions to show ope­nings were the occa­sion for publi­shing the first let­ters of their alpha­bet book, a series of A, B, and C capi­tals, three ini­tial let­ters that alrea­dy make up the center’s acro­nym, CACB.

Joining the Bazaar Compatible Program in Shanghai, Claude Closky, whose curio­si­ty with res­pect to the notion of time is well known, wor­ked with an object nor­mal­ly meant to pro­mote busi­ness ser­vices and pro­du­ced a 2017 calen­dar, the dates in which ins­tead run coun­ter to productivity.

Asked to desi­gn Everything You Wanted to Know About Curating, Hans Ulrich Obrist’s book publi­shed by Sternberg Press, the Zak Group came up with a new punc­tua­tion mark in 2011, a joint crea­tion with the font desi­gner Radim Peško. This new punc­tua­tion brings toge­ther the line of a ques­tion mark with that of the sym­bol for infi­ni­ty, ∞. The inter­fi­ni­ty mark, the pro­po­sed name, indi­cates a ques­tion that calls for both an infi­nite num­ber of ans­wers and no ans­wer in and of itself. In 2017, this typo­gra­phi­cal sample was publi­shed for an exhi­bi­tion that was part of the Brno Biennial. Associated with a set of inter­fi­nite ques­tions, the book­let fea­tures a series of cha­rac­ters that would com­plete the type­faces desi­gned by Peško.

Put in charge of the Johann Jacobs Museum’s visual iden­ti­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Vier5 deve­lo­ped the institution’s typo­gra­phy by com­bi­ning Zueri-tan­gente and Zueri-rund, two type­faces spe­ci­fi­cal­ly desi­gned by them. Dedicated to hybrid prac­tices that link pure­ly artis­tic approaches to arti­facts from dai­ly life, the venue now sees its com­mu­ni­ca­tions taking dif­ferent type­faces accor­ding to the message’s pur­pose and how it is to be dif­fu­sed. Communication objects are given a for­ce­ful mate­rial pre­sence through the use of screen prin­ting, allo­wing the desi­gners to print on both the cloth used in adver­ti­sing ban­ners han­ging at the venue’s entrance and the enve­lope-for­mat card­stock for invi­ta­tions and notecards.

Between 2003 and 2006, the artist Claude Closky rewor­ked the busi­ness cards of the gal­le­ry owner Davis Fleiss and the desi­gner Olivier Vadrot, manual­ly adding his own address and phone num­ber while cros­sing out the ear­lier prin­ted infor­ma­tion. Inversely, the artist sug­ges­ted to the two other pro­ta­go­nists that he note their infor­ma­tion on what had ori­gi­nal­ly been his busi­ness card. Scanned and prin­ted off, seve­ral hun­dreds of these cards conti­nue to be func­tio­nal, divi­ding one and the same ter­ri­to­ry bet­ween two individuals.

Tasked with crea­ting dif­ferent docu­ments and media sup­ports for the Documenta 14 in Athens, the gra­phic desi­gners of Vier5 came up with a ver­na­cu­lar type­face that was used for all the labels. Small square white plas­tic panels, bor­ro­wed from the voca­bu­la­ry of the street, were deployed as sup­ports for the adhe­sive let­ters in the signage for art­works that were dis­played out­doors. Along these lines, pre­cious minia­ture paving stones made of real marble and screen-prin­ted with the names of the fea­tu­red artists held down large labels for the works dis­played indoors.

Along the Quai Conti in Paris, the artist Marie-Ange Guilleminot took over three stalls his­to­ri­cal­ly reser­ved for the famous bou­qui­nistes, the out­door book­sel­lers. For the color of these stalls, two shades of green are autho­ri­zed by city offi­cials. To pro­mote the event, SpMillot pro­du­ced two busi­ness card models, embos­sed and hot-stam­ped in gold leaf on two types of colo­red stock in the two colors. While one of the cards is made up of a single type of paper, the other is pas­ted on white paper, pro­ba­bly to achieve an equal thi­ck­ness for the two objects.

Put in charge of desi­gning the pro­gram, press releases, and the invi­ta­tion to the 24^th Festival inter­na­tio­nal de l’affiche et du gra­phisme de Chaumont (the International Poster and Graphic Design Festival of Chaumont), Marie Proyart and Jean-Marie Courant avoi­ded repro­du­cing the festival’s pos­ter that year or crea­ting an addi­tio­nal image for the back of the invi­ta­tion. Rather they approa­ched the invi­ta­tion as if it were the cre­dits sequence of the event, unfol­ding its contents over the card’s accor­dion folds. The back for the French, the front for the English. The object was shrink-wrap­ped and sent out with accom­pa­nying post­cards, the back of each sho­wing a visual with res­pect to one of the fea­tu­red projects.

The gra­phic desi­gners of Vier5 were asked to create dif­ferent docu­ments and media sup­ports for Documenta 14 in Athens; they pro­po­sed floo­ding the city with the num­ber 14, using graf­fi­ti, sti­ckers even socks. It was a way for them to announce, inte­grate, and enable the event to pro­gres­si­ve­ly coexist with the Greek context.

A group of three ring-necked para­keets, which are consi­de­red an inva­sive spe­cies, repre­sents the signi­fi­cant num­ber of French artists who have immi­gra­ted to Brussels. Like the labels on fruit, the three birds serve as a logo for the EXTRA cultu­ral pro­gram orga­ni­zed by the French embas­sy in its efforts to sup­port the French art scene in Brussels, which inclu­ded the gra­phic artists themselves.

This motif was part of the set of the play direc­ted by Éric Vigner in 2006, La Pluie d’Été/Hiroshima mon amour, after Marguerite Duras. It also appea­red in dif­ferent exhi­bi­tions and lies as well as at the heart of a type­face cal­led Irradiation. It is an enlar­ged view of the Ben-Day Dots screen pro­cess (a dot for­med by a constel­la­tion of other dots, in fact) and brings out what nor­mal­ly disap­pears in the name of the technique’s form. Like the one detail that even­tual­ly becomes the abi­ding cen­ter of the dis­cus­sion, the use of lino­leum here makes it pos­sible to com­pose colors and den­si­ties square by square, like a screen view.

An avid mani­pu­la­tor of objects desi­gned to orga­nize time, Manuel Raeder pro­po­sed a new calen­dar in 2016, invi­ting twelve inter­na­tio­nal artists to take part in the pro­ject. The land­scape that the dif­ferent open­work and super­im­po­sed pages com­pose is spe­ci­fic to the ali­gn­ment of the per­fo­ra­tions and the arran­ge­ment deci­ded on by the owner.

Through De Stihl, Olivier Lellouche and Olivier Lebrun ques­tion design’s modes of pro­duc­tion. In 2013 they put toge­ther a slide show on the life of Ugo Mari, who lived in his bro­ther Enzo’s sha­dow. Each slide was sub­tit­led with quo­ta­tions from Ugo. Like an ope­ra libret­to, the publi­ca­tion fea­tures the texts from the slide pro­jec­tion but above all it docu­ments the words’ true ori­gins, i.e., song lyrics, quo­ta­tions from theo­re­ti­cal texts, excerpts from The Simpsons. This object pro­vides the keys, then, to an impos­ture, yet also extends the pro­jec­tion of a fic­tio­nal cha­rac­ter into our reality. 

The group show fea­tu­ring the short-lis­ted artists for the 15th Fondation d’entreprise Ricard Prize bor­ro­wed its title from the work of the French wri­ter Marguerite Duras. At the heart of the accom­pa­nying cata­logue, a cor­pus of post­cards, tear-off book­marks on which pho­to repro­duc­tions of the art­work are prin­ted, views of the exhi­bi­tion, and sources of the quo­ta­tions used by the jour­nal Criticism, some texts of which are also repro­du­ced in the work. The cata­logue, then, is a sum of docu­ments that can be consul­ted, hand­led, and rear­ran­ged as the rea­der sees fit.