The New Typography in French-speaking Scenes: Impacts and Resistances
Symposium, 12–14 February 2026
Cité internationale des Arts, auditorium
18, Rue de l’Hôtel de Ville
75004 Paris
Argument
The expression “New Typography” was the title of an essay by László Moholy-Nagy in the Bauhaus exhibition catalog of 1923, as well as that of the book by Jan Tschichold published in 1928 (Die neue Typographie). It now refers to the avant-garde movement that attempted to adapt graphic design to the needs of its period. The New Typography was retained by historiography as an emblem of the modernist shift that was taking place in graphic design at the time, and which found a second wind after WW2 with a new, New Typography which merged with the Swiss style or the International Typographic Style. However, the spread and reception of this movement were not uniform. While its effects on the German-speaking and Anglo-Saxon scenes have been fairly extensively studied, in the short and long term throughout the 20th century, research on the reactions it provoked in the French-speaking scenes – adoption, rejection, or negotiation – is less common. The principles, both formal and political, set out by the protagonists of the New Typography such as Jan Tschichold, gave rise to debates, adhesions and resistances, all of which shed original light on the international context from the 1920s to the 1970s. The goal of this symposium is to broaden the scope of historiography by examining under-explored scenes: France, Belgium, French-speaking Switzerland, Quebec and countries which were at the time under Belgian and French domination in the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. It aims to confirm or refute commonly accepted propositions (such as the late establishment, from the 1960s, of the New Typography in France through the “Suisses de Paris”, that is Swiss designers who had migrated to Paris), to put forward hypotheses and to open up work tracks.
Contributions correspond to one of the following five threads:
General thread: the reaction in the French-speaking scenes to the principles of New Typography as they were presented by Tschichold in his publications.
Magazines and Journals: the echoes or oppositions to New Typography in the theoretical discourse conveyed both by professional graphic designers’ magazines and by art, architecture, or more broadly cultural magazines.
Typographic Materials: proximity or dialogue with New Typography in the activity of type designers and foundries.
Great Projects: presence or inspiration of New Typography in international exhibitions and large identity and signage systems.
Individuals: a look at New Typography through its actors and heirs, based on archives or living testimonies.
Program
Thursday, 12 February 2026
9:30
Registration
10:00
Introduction
Catherine de Smet, Davide Fornari
10:30Photographie publicitaire et Nouvelle Typographie
In Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography, a manifesto published in 1928, one of the few illustrations related to France is a photographic advertisement (without text) taken from the French edition of Vogue: a bottle of Caron’s “N’aimez que moi” perfume. Based on this image, we can consider the following hypothesis: is French New Typography more evident in photographic advertising from the 1920s and 1930s than in traditional brochures or posters? The New Typography was both an avant-garde movement and a technological breakthrough, via the rise of printed photography as a typographic form in its own right (see V. Guégan, Après la typographie). This contribution focuses on those photographers who became advertisers, such as Maurice Tabard and Roger Parry, who explored new avenues for the medium. The history of photography has already covered this field, notably through Laure Albin Guillot and Tabard (director of the Deberny et Peignot photo studio). This investigation is based on the work of Christian Bouqueret, critic and collector, whose archives have just been added to the Kandinsky Library. It also focuses on a school of advertising active in Paris in the 1940s that specialized in photomontage, as mentioned in Typographische Monatsblätter. These photographs are analyzed from the perspective of publishing, typography, and graphic design, placing them in their economic, social, aesthetic, and technical context.
Une avant-garde française méconnue? Victor Guégan, ESAD / École supérieure d’art et de design d’Orléans
Victor Guégan holds a PhD in art history and graphic design (Paris-Sorbonne University). He is responsible for the collection of artists’ books at the Kandinsky Library (MNAM, Centre Pompidou) and is a lecturer and researcher at ESAD Orléans, where he works on the relationships between visual arts, media, and printed and digital (typo)graphic cultures. His book Après la typographie. Imprimerie industrielle et avant-gardes artistiques was published by B42 in 2025.
11:00
Questions
11:20
Coffee break
11:40Quelques opposants à la Nouvelle Typographie
This communication focuses on negative reactions in French-speaking circles to the New Typography promoted by Jan Tschichold and others. It deals in particular with the texts and theories of the French typographer of Hungarian origin, Ladislas Mandel. In several of his writings, Mandel expressed strong reluctance, even exasperation, towards these graphic forms and typographies, which he considered to have “led to the negation of 2,000 years of Latin writing.” This presentation revisits the tenets of his thinking, his “ideological source”, and the masters who inspired him. It also addresses the seemingly aesthetic and graphic debate that in reality conceals other cultural and political dimensions.
On a cultural level, the presentation discusses the issue of transparency, a paradigm widely invoked between 1925 and 1980. From a political point of view, it focuses on the challenges of progress, its limits, and its risks. This brings up the reference to various authors and thinkers from different backgrounds: graphic designers, graphic design theorists, and philosophers.Charles Gautier, EBABX / École supérieure des beaux-arts de Bordeaux
Charles Gautier has been teaching graphic design history and theory, as well as humanities applied to visual arts, at EBABX since 2022. A graphic designer by training, he is a graduate of the École Estienne and holds a doctorate in language sciences. He is also a lecturer at the École Estienne and, since 2024, has been leading a seminar on the anthropology of memory and graphic arts in the master’s program at Paris Cité University.
12:10Des fantômes dans la machine
This communication considers the impact of and resistance to New Typography in French-speaking Africa (1925-1980) as a complex process of negotiation rather than a simple diffusion or binary rejection. It examines how the New Typography’s ideal of “clarity” clashed with policies of linguistic standardization (notably via the African International Alphabet) and how aspirations for modern rationality had to contend with the imperatives of nascent national sovereignty and the material reality of printing, marked by scarcity and limitations in typographic infrastructure. This deficiency often dictated a de facto visual pragmatism distinct from the dogmas of New Typography. The production of “exotic” typefaces (Marocaines, Ramses) within the metropolises themselves projected a colonial imaginary of otherness and offered an ideological and aesthetic counterpoint that contradicted functionalist universalism. By examining the interaction between these linguistic policies, the material constraints of print, and the logic of imperial representation, this contribution aims to depict a typographic landscape where the modernist ideal was constantly negotiated, adapted, or rendered impractical, illustrating the complexity of the global circulation of forms and ideas in situations of asymmetrical power.
Notes sur l’impérialisme, les fonderies métropolitaines et l’imprimé en Afrique francophone coloniale et post-colonialeYvon Langué, ESAV / École supérieure des arts visuels, Marrakech
Yvon Langué is a graphic designer, teacher, and curator based in Marrakech. He is head of the Graphic and Digital Design program at the École supérieure des Arts Visuels (ESAV) in Marrakech. Together with Soukaina Aboulaoula, he co-founded the curatorial duo Untitled and the design agency of the same name. He is interested in the role of text in the formation of discursive and performative spaces, which influence the meaning of art, the function and social responsibility of institutions, and the social position and status of the artist.
12:40
Questions
13:00
Lunch break
14:30
Magazines: introduction
Juanma Gomez, Sonia de Puineuf
15:00Un unicum moderniste en contexte lyonnais
Among the few French-language references cited by Jan Tschichold in The New Typography is an unusual book published in 1921 by Jean Epstein with Éditions de la Sirène under the title Bonjour Cinéma. While this title is part of a set of references on cinema that enable Tschichold to develop a comparison between print media and modern photographic media, Epstein’s book is also an example of futurist-inspired typographic design and an early example of photomontage. However, the cover, layout, and illustrations of Epstein’s book are the work of a rather marginal figure in the history of graphic modernism: Claude Dalbanne, a painter, printing historian, and future museum curator from Lyon, who was close to the printer Marius Audin. A quick look at Dalbanne’s symbolist-inspired paintings seems to place him a thousand miles away from the New Typography. However, in 1922, Dalbanne edited the sixth issue of the magazine Causeries typographiques, a Lyon-based magazine edited and printed by Audin, and this issue resembles a kind of early and isolated manifesto for a New Typography in France. In his text entitled “La typographie d’aujourd’hui” (Typography Today), Dalbanne cites futurist manifestos and the magazine L’Esprit nouveau, but more broadly, he constructs the fragments of a modernist theory of typography that would take advertising as its primary model. This presentation therefore attempts to trace the history of this modernist unicum and to understand how such a proposal could have appeared so early on and ultimately met with little immediate response. The presentation also shows that some of Dalbanne’s proposals, particularly those concerning photomontage and the influence of cinema, were taken up again with great vigor some ten years later.
Claude Dalbanne et le n° 6 des « Causeries typographiques »Max Bonhomme, Université de Strasbourg
Max Bonhomme is a lecturer in design history and visual cultures at the University of Strasbourg. His research focuses on the social and political aspects of graphic design in relation to image and media theory. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Transbordeur, for which he has co-edited several thematic issues. He is the author of Propagande graphique: photomontage et culture de l’imprimé dans la France des années 1930 (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2025) and co-curator of the exhibition “Couper Coller Imprimer” at La Contemporaine of Nanterre (2025- 2026).
15:30
Questions
15:50
Coffee break
16:20Between Resistance and Reinvention
This contribution examines how Belgian neo-avant-garde periodicals from 1950 to 1990 diverge from the rationalist aesthetics and normative aspirations of the Neue Typographie, especially in its later incarnation as the International Typographic Style. While the principles laid out by Jan Tschichold and their transnational diffusion shaped corporate, institutional, and educational visual identities across Europe, the publications gathered in the Digital Archive of Belgian Neo-Avant-Garde Periodicals foreground a radically different approach to graphic design. Created by artists, writers, and activists operating outside or against institutional frameworks, these small-run magazines – such as De Tafelronde, Anar, Labris, and Force Mental – privilege experimentation, immediacy, and ambiguity over legibility, hierarchy, and grid-based rationality. Typography in these publications is not a vehicle of neutral communication but a site of visual and political agitation. Their DIY production methods, use of typewriting, mimeograph machine, hand-lettering, collage, and irregular layout techniques deliberately break with the typographic orderliness associated with corporate modernism. By situating these periodicals within a broader field of graphic production, this presentation highlights how artists and writers in Belgium renegotiated typographic norms to articulate a critique of consumer society, institutional art, and typographic authority itself. In doing so, they expand the typographic canon and assert a counter-history in which design becomes a tool of contestation rather than conformity.
Belgian Neo-Avant-Garde Periodicals and the Refusal of Design NormsThomas Crombez, KASK / Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen
Thomas Crombez is a lecturer, author, translator and publisher. He teaches art theory and history of graphic design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (AP Hogeschool Antwerpen) and at LUCA School of Arts Brussels. In 2016, he founded the publishing and design studio Letterwerk.
16:50La nouvelle typographie dans les revues d’architecture françaises
This intervention raises a number of questions concerning the reception of New Typography in architecture journals active in France in the 1930s. Historiography has generally described L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui as an “innovative” journal on the French architectural scene, but its graphic design, which was indeed unique among French architecture magazines of the interwar period—most of which were marked by the tradition of the book and, in some cases, such as L’Architecture vivante, by a certain return to order—has rarely been examined. Beyond a few similarities between the physical form of this magazine (known as the “spiral magazine”) and the aesthetics of U.A.M. (Union des Artistes Modernes), this contribution attempts to assess the extent to which, before WW2, L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui imported and integrated some graphic processes from the New Typography, without necessarily innovating itself. It illustrates the evolution of its form since its first issue in 1930, which featured a number of experiments similar to those found in contemporary German magazines, but which were quickly abandoned in favor of a whiter, more static page. This presentation also attempts to identify the many cultural factors that, in the interwar period, led to a form of resistance to the acceptance of functionalist typography in French architecture magazines. It draws some comparisons with Italian and Belgian magazines, which were closer to functionalist typography. Finally, it offers an overview of the decades following WW2, placing L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui in perspective with two magazines created by André Bloc: Art d’Aujourd’hui and Aujourd’hui: Art et architecture.
de l’entre-deux-guerres : résistances et acculturations.Hélène Jannière, Université Rennes 2
As an architect and architectural historian, Hélène Jannière is a professor of contemporary architectural history at the University of Rennes 2. She has been a visiting researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (2001) and the Politecnico di Milano (2024), and a visiting professor at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Buenos Aires, 2024). Together with Paolo Scrivano, she founded and directs the international network Mapping Architectural Criticism. Her main research focuses on the history of architectural publishing and criticism in the 20th century, a topic on which she has published, among other works: Politiques éditoriales et architecture moderne : l’émergence de nouvelles revues en France et en Italie, 1923-1939 (Paris, 2002), Critique et architecture: un état des lieux contemporain (Paris, 2019) and, most recently, La critique architecturale, un espace disputé. Critiques, architectes, opinion publique. France 1953-1977 (Rennes, 2025).
17:20
Questions
17:45La Nouvelle Typographie par-delà la Galaxie Gutenberg :
In 1925, László Moholy-Nagy introduced a concept that was fundamental to New Typography: the “typophoto.” For him, the term referred to a new combination of typographic signs and photographic images on the printed page, but it also referred, more fundamentally, to a new photographic condition of writing and reading. While he believed that this fundamentally photographic nature of modern written communication was linked to the advent of photocomposition, it also paved the way for forms of writing that were emancipated from any printed medium. Whether displayed on screen or in exhibition spaces, these non-printed forms of written communication would occupy him greatly in the years that followed and would be implemented in particular in the famous German section of the Exhibition of the Société des artistes décorateurs in Paris in 1930. After the war, however, it was once again within the more restricted framework of printed typography that the legacy of typophoto began to be revived, notably through the international success of the Swiss Style. It was not until the mid-1960s that Moholy-Nagy’s broader vision of graphic arts regained its rightful place. Paradoxically, in French graphic design, this revival came about through some of the early proponents of Marshall McLuhan’s ideas on moving beyond the “Gutenberg Galaxy” and the advent of audiovisual communication. With figures such as Gérard Blanchard and Albert Hollenstein, practitioners of the “Gutenberg Galaxy” themselves began to develop what would become a “New Typography” that went beyond the field of printing.
typophoto et écrans de la République de Weimar à la France des années 1960Olivier Lugon, Université de Lausanne
Olivier Lugon is a photography historian and professor at the University of Lausanne (Department of Film History and Aesthetics / Center for Historical Cultural Studies). A specialist in 20th-century photography, the history of exhibition design, illustrated publishing, and projection, he co-edits the journal Transbordeur : photographie, histoire, société with Christian Joschke. From 2024 to 2028, he is leading the research project Graphic Design for the Screen: Slides, Still Film, Cinema, Television (1945-1980).
18:15
Questions
18:30
End of the first day
Friday, 13 February 2026
9:30
Registration
10:00
Typographic materials: introduction
Tânia Raposo, Alice Savoie
10:30The Letterforms of Others
As one of the leading voices of the New Typography movement in Germany, Jan Tschichold offered a brief yet telling reflection on “Newer Typography in France” in an illustrated article published in the magazine Die Form in 1931. Rather than addressing book typography, Tschichold’s attention is confined to two letterheads (one of them is a type specimen) and, notably, to A.M. Cassandre’s display type Bifur, released by Deberny & Peignot two years earlier. In his review of “witty and surprising” Bifur he also uses the occasion to deliver a pointed critique: “It would be good if some German type foundries could show a bit of the courage of this French foundry to create more substantial letterforms than the common, usually inferior repetitions of old and new typefaces”. Was this criticism directed at specific type foundries or typefaces? What was the nature of Tschichold’s relationships with type manufacturers in both France and Germany? How was the New Typography movement, as practiced “on the other side”, received and discussed within each national context? In evaluating whether Tschichold’s critique was justified, this talk undertakes a close analysis of his 1931 review, situating it within the broader discourse surrounding New Typography in both countries. It examines how this discourse was shaped by external perceptions as documented in journals and periodicals, and considers a selection of typefaces issued by German and French type foundries during this period. The talk also reflects on Tschichold’s own attempts at type design up to 1931.
Discourse in New Typography between France and GermanyFerdinand Ulrich, FH / Fachhochschule Salzburg
Ferdinand Ulrich is a typographer and a type history researcher. He holds a PhD from the University of Reading, is a visiting lecturer at Salzburg University of Applied Sciences since 2023 and frequently writes for Eye Magazine. His research interests circulate around type manufacturing in the 20th century, with a focus on the discourse in early digital type design technologies.
11:00
Questions
11:20
Coffee break
11:40Les créations typographiques d’Albert Boton
Graphic and typeface designer Albert Boton (1932–2023) was an important figure in the French typography scene in the second half of the 20th century. He worked for the Parisian foundry Deberny & Peignot in the 1950s, then for Studio Hollenstein, and was a prolific typeface designer. He played a decisive role in the design of Brasilia, initiated by the Swiss Albert Hollenstein, and created several iconic typefaces himself, including Eras. His work, free from dogma, bears the mark of New Typography and modernism, while revealing a sensitivity to the gesturality dear to Maximilien Vox and his vision of a “Latin script”. This presentation explores the influences that run through Boton’s work and highlights the central role of his photographic practice in his creative process. It draws on the typographer’s personal archives as well as a series of previously unpublished interviews conducted over the years, which form the basis of a two-volume book to be published shortly.Olivier Nineuil, Typofacto Paris
Olivier Nineuil is co-founder and partner of the Typofacto foundry, typeface designer, author, publisher, and workshop leader on typographic design. Since 1985, he has been designing fonts exclusively on commission for artists, publishers, and companies. He co-founded Éditions de l’Alizarine with Yann Autret, which will soon publish books by Roger Druet as well as works by author and illustrator Jean Alessandrini. He is currently preparing an extensive study on Albert Boton, to be published in three volumes.
12:10Contre les linéales
In French professional journals of the 1950s and 1960s, sans serif fonts were almost universally rejected. In contrast to the Swiss and German enthusiasm for geometric sans serif fonts, perceived as the emblem of modern, functional, and universal typography, circles associated with Graphie Latine — particularly around the École de Lure — advocated a different vision: that of typography based on legibility, humanist tradition, and classical models. Based on articles published in professional journals such as Caractère and Le Courrier Graphique, the presentation highlights the arguments of figures such as Maximilien Vox, Raymond Gid, Fernand Baudin, and José Mendoza, who denounced the impersonal, monotonous, and allegedly illegible appearance of sans serif fonts. Behind this criticism lies a strong ideological stance: the rejection of Northern European supremacy, the promotion of a “Latin” typographic identity, and the desire to reaffirm the cultural role of books in the face of advertising excesses. Far from being a simple formal debate, the controversy became a field of resistance to a modernity perceived as technocratic. The fight against rulers is part of a quest for a “normal” but demanding typography, legible but elegant, rooted in French national history and an ideal of clarity. It is in magazines, places of exchange and influence between practitioners, theorists, and industrialists, that this battle finds its strongest expression.Manuel Sesma, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Manuel Sesma holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona and is a teacher, researcher, editor, and translator specializing in typography. He began his professional career as a photographer and graphic designer before turning to academia. He has taught at several Spanish higher education institutions. He is a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), where he heads the Department of Design and Image.
12:40
Questions
13:00
Lunch break
14:30
Projects: introduction
Sara De Bondt, Léa Panijel
15:00Expo 67 et la réception de la Nouvelle Typographie au Québec et au Canada
Expo 67 was one of the most significant events of the 20th century for Canada, Quebec, and Montreal. It took place against a backdrop of profound social, economic, and political change: beginning in the early 1960s, the Quiet Revolution reflected the desire of French-speaking Quebecers to break with a past often described as the “Great Darkness” and forge a modern, autonomous identity. Expo 67 marked the maturation and affirmation of a resolutely contemporary graphic design in the public space. Posters, logos, signage, and publications revealed new forms of visual expression. While Expo 67 was one of the high points of this modernization in Montreal, it was also part of a national landscape in which modernism developed in parallel in various urban centers across the country — notably Toronto and Ottawa — following trajectories that were still in their early stages but revealed varied nuances and sensibilities. The principles of graphic modernism — inherited from the Bauhaus, De Stijl, and Jan Tschichold’s New Typography, characterized by asymmetry, modular grids, and straight lines — were widely disseminated in the 1950s under the influence of the Swiss Style. These principles are helping to shape a new generation of graphic designers internationally, including in Canada. They are disseminated through various channels — publications, exhibitions, professional mobility, study trips to Europe, and the arrival of European designers — and are reconfigured according to varying linguistic, cultural, and contextual realities. This presentation proposes to analyze the graphic designs of Expo 67 in light of the New Typography and to examine the dynamics of appropriation specific to the Quebec and Canadian contexts.Louise Paradis, UQAM / Université du Québec à Montréal
Louise Paradis has been a professor at UQAM since 2024. A graduate of UQAM and ECAL, her research focuses on visual culture and the history of graphic design, with an interest in sociopolitical, cultural, and technological contexts. She has studied figures such as Jacqueline Casey, Jan Tschichold, and Herbert Matter, as well as Swiss typography. She co-edited the book 30 Years of Swiss Typographic Discourse in the Typografische Monatsblätter (ECAL / Lars Müller Publishers, 2013).
15:30 p.m
Questions
15:50 p.m.
Coffee break
16:20 p.m.La typographie en façade
It is not obvious to argue that French-speaking graphic designers were influenced by Jan Tschichold (1902–1972) and his New Typography. Researchers such as Roxane Jubert have pointed out that “the graphic arts and typography of the Bauhaus, and a fortiori the New Typography, do not seem to have found any real resonance in France.” Indeed, French graphic designers focused more on illustrated posters than on typography in the strict sense. However, this paper aims to nuance this preconceived idea by showing that the principles of New Typography not only penetrated the graphic design scenes in France and Belgium, but also emerged in an unexpected field: urban space, and more specifically in illuminated architectural facades. These typographic facades can be understood as “petrified posters”: compositions of illuminated letters and dark and light surfaces (plays of light and shadow reminiscent of the contrast between black and white on paper) that echo modernist compositional logic in their own way, while circumventing the typo-photo model promoted by Tschichold. The main vehicle for this transfer of knowledge was undoubtedly U.A.M. (Union des Artistes Modernes), which brought together architects, graphic designers, painters, photographers, decorators, furniture designers, jewelers, typographers, and others in Paris. Jan Tschichold exhibited twice at U.A.M.’s annual international exhibitions, in 1931 and 1932. Belgian figures such as architect Victor Bourgeois were also involved. It was in these Franco-Belgian exchanges, at the heart of U.A.M., that the spirit of New Typography seems to have found fertile ground, not only on paper, but also in the city, in letters of light.
La Nouvelle Typographie dans l’architecture lumineuse en France et en Belgique Ruth Hommelen, ENSAPL / École nationale supérieure d’architecture et de paysage de Lille
Ruth Hommelen holds a Master’s degree and a Master 2 Research degree in art and architecture history from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. She lectures in art and architecture history at St Lucas Antwerp and at the LUCA School of Arts. In 2026, she will defend her doctoral thesis on light architecture, entitled The Night-side of Modernity. Light Architecture and Metropolitan Culture during the Interwar Period, at ENSAPL.
16:50 p.m.La mise en scène du modèle suisse dans l’exposition “La Suisse présente la Suisse”
From November 26, 1971, to February 29, 1972, the exhibition La Suisse présente la Suisse opened a new chapter in Swiss cultural relations with Senegal. Organized by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Confederation’s arts promotion agency, the exhibition was held at the Musée Dynamique in Dakar. Bringing together a thousand objects, films, and a specific scenography, La Suisse présente la Suisse opened up original perspectives in graphic design and postcolonial theory. As such, this paper shows how the exhibition can be seen as a model of soft power orchestrated by and for Swiss cultural and political diplomacy, as well as certain industrial sectors, with the aim of communicating the attractiveness of the Swiss model in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. Produced at a time when the threat of communism and new migratory and racial issues were preoccupying public opinion, La Suisse présente la Suisse demonstrates how the exceptionalism and presumed neutrality of the Swiss system were to be communicated to the elites of “underdeveloped” countries in the early 1970s. This intervention posits that the exhibition’s representational system, through its conceptual, scenographic, and graphic choices, embodies a particular type of “democratic circle” that is currently evident in populist rhetoric about migration policies and certain stereotypes associated with Black people in Switzerland.Joël Vacheron, ECAL / École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)
Joël Vacheron is a researcher and journalist specializing in cultural studies. He holds a PhD in social sciences from the University of Lausanne and a master’s degree from Goldsmiths’ College in London. His research focuses on the intersections between visual studies, science and technology studies (STS), and decolonial thinking. He is co-founder of the Afropea Cultural Center and teaches in the visual communication department at the ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO).
17:20 p.m.
Questions
17:45 p.m.
Fin de la deuxième journée
Saturday, 14 February 2026
10:00
Registration
10:30
Persons: introduction
Chiara Barbieri, Sébastien Morlighem
11:00Pierre Faucheux, nouveau typographe ?
Active in typography and editorial design, Pierre Faucheux (1924–1999) embodies, like the New Typography movement in 20th-century Europe, a leading figure in post-war French graphic design. This recognition has sometimes overshadowed the details of an innovative practice, nourished by a keen knowledge of the history of typography. Best known for his work with the “livres-Club” and his collaborations with numerous publishing houses (Le Seuil, Galilée, Albin Michel, Pauvert, La Librairie générale française, etc.), Faucheux also developed a practice in architecture and spatial design that has yet to be fully explored. Describing himself as a “book architect”, he approaches this object with an attitude that, while seemingly experimental in certain formal choices, particularly at the Club Français du Livre, remains that of a new traditionalist. In the United Kingdom, this expression describes typographers such as Bruce Rogers and Stanley Morison, known for their in-depth and renewed studies of the rules of classical typography. Does this mean that Faucheux was never a modernist typographer, sensitive or aware of the New Typography and, more broadly, the International Style? That would be to oversimplify the opposition between tradition and modernism. It would be better to say that Faucheux was, in our opinion, a “cavalier” interpreter of the principles of New Typography — to borrow the French title of a critical article by Jan Tschichold published in 1961. A lover of regulatory layouts and page architecture, rigorous in his use of photographic documentation rather than illustration, close to both Le Corbusier and André Breton, Faucheux embodies a free approach, guided by the history of the book and an in-depth reading of spaces.Catherine Guiral de Trenqualye, ESAM / École supérieure d’arts & médias Caen/Cherbourg
Catherine Guiral is a graphic designer (officeabc with Brice Domingues), critic, and holds a PhD in design history. She co-founded the magazine Tombolo with Thierry Chancogne, writes for the magazine Faire, and explores the links between publishing and editing at the agency du doute, created with Brice Domingues and Jérôme Dupeyrat. She has co-curated several exhibitions on the typographer and urban planner Pierre Faucheux, hosted at Le Signe à Chaumont, Centre Pompidou and Brno Biennale. She teaches at the School of Arts and Media in Caen.
11:30
Questions
11:45
Coffee break
12:10Women and the New Typography in Belgium: Voices, Practices and Silences
Drawing from the exhibition Untold Stories. Women Designers in Belgium 1880–1980 (Design Museum Brussels), curated along with Katarina Serulus and Marjan Sterckx, this lecture examines the different meanings of typography for women graphic designers in Belgium between 1925 and 1980. The narrative of New Typography, often dominated by male figures and international modernist centers, rarely considers how women engaged with typographic design across education, publishing and activism. Long before entering art schools, many women encountered typography through embroidery samplers produced at school. These exercises combined decorative stitching with abecedaries and monograms, cultivating patience, discipline and virtue according to gendered pedagogical ideals. Yet, unintentionally, they also introduced compositional and typographic principles, such as letter spacing, rhythm and alignment. Women trained at progressive institutions such as La Cambre adopted modernist design languages inspired by the New Typography. Hélène Denis-Bohy, for instance, used bold typography and clear layouts not only as formal experiments but as instruments for feminist self-expression. After WW2, figures such as Hélène Van Coppenolle and Jacqueline Ost advanced design education and publishing, shaping visual literacy in Belgium’s postwar reconstruction.
By the 1970s, collectives like Liever Heks and Dolle Mina redefined typography and poster design as vehicles for activism, irony and social critique. Their hand-drawn lettering and spontaneous layouts broke away from the rationalist canon of modernism, reclaiming visual communication as a site of resistance and solidarity. This lecture reconsiders the New Typography not only as a stylistic or technical revolution but as a space where gender, pedagogy and politics intersected. Through the lens of women’s experiences in Belgium, it reveals how design became both a discipline of control and a means of emancipation.Javier Gimeno Martínez, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Javier Gimeno Martinez is an associate professor of design history and theory at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focuses on issues of national identity and mobility in relation to design. His articles have been published in various academic journals. He is the author of Design and National Identity (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) and Design History and Culture. Methods and Approaches (Routledge, 2025). He is a member of the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS).
12:40
Questions
13:00
Lunch break
14:30Le design graphique en Suisse et en France : regards croisés
One French, one Swiss, two graphic designers, two different generations. Étienne Robial and André Baldinger both furthered their initial training (the former at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the latter with Hans Rudolf Bosshard in Zurich) in each other’s home country: Robial at the École des Arts et Métiers in Vevey in 1967, Baldinger at the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique in 1992.
This exchange is an opportunity to look back on their experiences as students and then teachers, as well as to discuss key moments in their professional careers and ask them how they received (or did not receive) the direct or filtered legacy of the ideas of the New Typography.André Baldinger et Etienne Robial en conversation,
André Baldinger is a typographer and type designer. Co-founder of Baldinger•Vu-Huu (2008–2024) and the BVH Type foundry, his work combines research, teaching and graphic design practice. He is a professor at ENSAD Paris and has also taught at ECAL in Lausanne, ANRT in Nancy and ZHdK in Zurich. His research focuses on the history of forms, writing and typographic systems. He co-coordinated the symposium Design graphique, les formes de l’histoire (Centre Pompidou and ENSAD, 2014). As a resident at Villa Kujoyama in 2019, he designed the exhibition “Japanese Writing Systems” (Inalco, 2022).
modérée par Sébastien Morlighem
Etienne Robial is a graphic designer, co-founder in 1982 and director of on/off productions, a company specializing in channel identity and on-air graphics (La Sept, M6, Show TV, RTL, and RTL9). He was previously a comic book editor at Futuropolis. He worked as an art director for the press and was art director at Canal+ from 1984 to 2009. He taught for many years at the École supérieure des arts graphiques Penninghen (ESAG) in Paris. In 2022, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him.
15:30 p.m
Questions
15:45
Coffee break
16:15Le design graphique en Suisse romande
Based and active in Lausanne, Flavia Cocchi and Werner Jeker are co-founders of Atelier Cocchi and Ateliers du Nord, respectively. Through their posters and numerous collaborations with cultural institutions, both designers — belonging to two different generations — have made a decisive contribution to shaping the visual identity of Lausanne.
This conversation explores the graphic design scene in French-speaking Switzerland, which is still too often marginalized in historiography, generally dominated by the canonical opposition between Basel and Zurich. It also examines the links, influences, and exchanges between French-speaking Switzerland and France, putting into perspective the role of language and cultural contexts in graphic design practice from the mid-1960s to the present day.Flavia Cocchi et Werner Jeker en conversation
Flavia Cocchi is a graphic designer whose practice focuses on typography. Before opening her own studio in Lausanne in 1997, she worked for Werner Jeker and Massimo Vignelli. The Galerie Anatome in Paris and the Mudac in Lausanne each dedicated a solo exhibition to her in 2010 and 2012.
modérés par Chiara Barbieri
Werner Jeker is a graphic designer, illustrator, and teacher. He was artistic director of Weimar’99, European Capital of Culture, designed the pavilion “Signal Douleur” for Expo.02, and created the visual identities of the Institut national du patrimoine (INP) in Paris, the Schloss Neuhardenberg Foundation in Berlin (2001) and the City of Geneva (2004). He taught at the Ecole des beaux-arts in Lausanne in 1974, the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, and the ENSAD in Paris. He was also co-head of the visual communication department at the Bern University of the Arts.
17:15 p.m.
Questions
17:30 p.m.
Closing of the symposium
18:00 p.m.
Cocktail
Conference Chairs
Catherine de Smet, Université Paris 8, UR AIAC
Davide Fornari, ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)
Convenors
Chiara Barbieri, ECAL/École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)
Sara De Bondt, ECAL/École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)
Juanma Gomez, Université Paris 8, UR AIAC
Léa Panijel, ECAL/École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)
Sonia de Puineuf, Université Paris 8, UR AIAC
Tânia Raposo, Université Paris 8, UR AIAC
Alice Savoie, ECAL/École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO)
Katrien Van Haute, Luca School of Arts, Gand
Thomas Huot-Marchand, Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT), Nancy