Typo Apeloig. Un americano en París.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sud Marquage)
1997

“L’Afrique du Sud au présent” (South Africa Today) was the theme of the 1997 Literature Festival in Aix-en-Provence, this remarkable rendezvous with foreign literature, using a theme, or the name of an invited writer. Apartheid was abolished in South Africa in the early 1990s after a long, violent struggle. Consisting of five columns of alternating, irregularly geometric black and white stripes, the poster evokes both natural and manmade associations – from bamboo to zebras to prison bars to books on a shelf. The poster is divided into two equal parts: the top black, the bottom ivory. These solid color blocks (representing the South African population) meet in the center, where an irregular series of light brown stripes stitches them into a “mixed zone.” The long, narrow letters, which matches the length of the stripes, are tangled among the stripes, passing in front of and behind them, as if hand sewn or an animal darting through tall grass.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Dubois Imagerie)
1998

The flickering rays of light and deep shadows in this poster evoke the humidity of a Caribbean night. Words crisscross diagonally over an image of an open book, like the syncopated rhythms of Caribbean music. A complex collage of tattered palm fronds forms the letters. The frayed lettering seems to fly off the rifled pages. Like the nomadic spirit of many of the featured writers, the text is in constant motion, dynamically evolving and exploding in a cacophony of meaning. The poster is an invitation to page through the great manuscript of an  archipelago in movement, from Cuba to Haiti.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2013

The theme of the 2013 Fête du livre was “Baltique / Méditerranée”. The guests were to be writers from Northern as well as Southern Europe. What they had in common came from the two bodies of water framing Europe, like two wide horizontal parentheses: in the North, the Baltic Sea, in the South the Mediterranean. The poster symbolizes these two European inland seas that frame the whole European continent: the empty space in the middle of the poster evokes thus the meeting place of many diverses cultures. It also recalls the writers facing the blank page, its inspiration, the idea of unknown territories…. A blank page is also a door – it contains infinity. As if to signify it, Apeloig cut off parts of the title’s letters, putting them partially outside the frame, and making thus the poster larger than its actual size.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2009

The 2009 Fête du livre explored the rapidly shifting political, economic, and social landscapes of Asian countries through their literature. Many of the Asian writers explore themes of migration, racism, rootlessness, displacement, the search for identity, and cultural diversity. The poster represents urban population density, a fact of life in cities such as Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, and Hong Kong. Among the world’s most heavily populated areas, these cities teem with people and can be difficult to navigate. Inspired by several photographs that captured the claustophobic atmosphere, a typographic composition was designed to represent the façades of skyscrapers. Resembling
a page of Chinese ideograms, the composition references both traditional and contemporary subjects. A cloud of pollution spreads throughout the design, creating a visceral spatial experience. Rich pinks, spanning dark to bright hues, represent textile dyes, cherry blossoms, peonies, and Asian spices. The colors also call to mind the cheap plastic toys and household goods mass-produced in Asia and then shipped around the world.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2012

The theme of the 2012 Fête du livre was “Bruits du monde” (Noises of the World). Featured writers from Hungary, Spain, Israel, China, and France who are aware of harsh political realities and of the violence and absurdity of much conflict, each writer maintains an independent stance, politically engaged to preserve space for intimacy. The festival’s poster captures the diversity of human perspectives and experiences. The background is a blue expanse across which an archipelago of black lowercase characters. Heavily inked fingerprints have been impressed upon them; whether they represent an act of maiming or of staunching a wound it is difficult to tell. The ink stains open up paths across the page, some of which cross over – undefined paths, like the shadows of tremulous, awkward gestures. Apeloig has created an abstract composition infused with feeling that evokes boundaries subject to invasion and all kinds of bombardment – ideological, political, journalistic, militaristic, and interpersonal.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
1999

The American writer Philip Roth was the focus of the 1999 Aix Literature Festival. On the poster, Roth’s face, shown close up, stares straight out at the viewer in a portrait composed from the titles of his novels, repeated in a mass of small letters. This laborious process of typographic modeling echoes Philip Roth’s prolific output, his obsessive nature, and his own experience of psychoanalysis. The title is treated in a similar fashion.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
2001

The 2001 edition of Aix-en-Provence’s foreign literature festival was devoted to American writer Toni Morrison. The portrait used by Apeloig in the poster was made dynamic by a close framing cutting the writer’s face in her right eye, and centering the other one in the composition. Thanks to chance, the letters forming the title allowed the construction of a typographic grid, through which the writer seems to look. The poster’s blue tint, as well as the importance given to Morrison’s eye, are a reference to her novel and first book The Bluest  Eye, published in 1970.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
120 × 176 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2002

The 2002 edition of Aix-en-Provence’s foreign literature festival was dedicated to Trinidadian-born author V.S. Naipaul, Nobel prize in 2001. Beneath the comedy and the almost kindly satire of these early works, there are glimpses of the bleak view of human existence and effort and self-fictionalising that were to become the key themes and motifs of his later work. In them, notably in the ambitious The Enigma of Arrival, part autobiography, part fiction, part meditation on life, time, death and the writing life, V.S. Naipaul created palpable geographical, social and cultural contexts in which to locate people, their stories and their emotions. In all of them, symbolism and ideas of universal import spring unforced out of realistically rendered detail. The force of the uprooting is the one Apeloig wanted to render in his poster, combining an author’s portrait in a collage with a photograph of a tree slice Apeloig took in California. The growth circles, centered on V.S. Naipaul’s eye, evoke the age, the passing of time and the travelm: all echoing to the author’s nomadism.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2007

Nigerian-born poet, novelist, and dramatist Wole Soyinka received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. In 2007, he was invited to Aix-en-Provence. An outspoken human rights activist. His voice articulates a modern identity for Africa through its manmade and natural challenges and its successes in art and politics. His personal journey mirrors the relationship between the home and the world, which was the 2007 festival title and theme, “La maison et le monde.” Like the fabrics woven by Soyinka’s master-weaver Yoruba ancestors, whose stories are so often portrayed in his works, the poster was designed using layers and strips of paper. The portrait was laser- printed, then cut into narrow bands that were hand woven. The poster’s typography follows the same logic, as each word appears woven into the interlaced paper. The final design preserves the border made by the two papers, celebrating the labor-intensive weaving that is part of Soyinka’s cultural heritage.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (5e Couleur)
2006

In 1995, Japanese author Kenzaburo Oé, an outspoken pacifist, 1994 Nobel Prize winner, titled the event in Aix: “Je suis de nouveau un homme” (I am a Man Once Again). Oé was deeply affected by the Hiroshima bombing and has criticized both his own country for the atrocities it committed during World War II, and the United States for its occupation of Japan. His work was also influenced by the birth of his handicapped first son, an experience that gave him new perspectives on life and literature. The poster features a photograph of the writer pieced together from three torn sections. The tears in the paper reflect Oé’s deep anxieties and anguish. From left to right, the pale green of the background grows darker, like the progression of a bruise. Cut like stencils, the two letters of his name have been forced into their simplest elements. With their layered arrangement, interrupted pictographic shapes, and accent marks, the letters take on the appearance of Japanese characters. This poster received the Gold Award from the Hong Kong International Poster Triennial in 2007.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2014

Great South American writer, Nobel prize for literature in 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa brought in his books a sense of cosmopolitanism, pluralism, conviviality, worldliness, multi-lingualism. Audacity, comedy, experimentalism, are all epithets that can be attached to his name and his work. Apeloig designed a mosaic portrait of the writer symbolising all Vargas Llosa‘s multifacetedness, in spite of and as well as his many rare gifts and talents as a novelist, remains fundamentally a great chronicler of the highs and lows of our carnal and passionate adventures as human beings. The letters of Vargas Llosa’s name are set like bridges built through lands, connecting the different blocks forming his portrait, as a metaphor of the passage from one place to another, or from one time to another.

Conseil Général de Seine-Martime
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen Imprimerie Dubois (Orléans)
1998

How is a contemporary work born, how do we bring an older work back to life, how does a young choreographer create a new movement vocabulary to baroque music? To the questions posed by the 1998 edition of Octobre en Normandie Festival, this graphic composition responds with a lyrical ode to the regeneration of art by art. On the poster, the music and dance separated by the lettering into two equal spaces in this collage. From bottom to top, we can pick out the images of the wing of a butterfly, the symbol of renaissance, and the arching, out-flung body of a man – which meet in the eye of the spectator, who is drawn to the vibrating energy of creation.

Conseil Général de Seine-Martime
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
1995

“October Opens the Season With Music” and “October Makes the Season Dance” are both part of the Octobre en Normandie festival. The experimental typeface Apeloig invented conveys the festival’s essence, evoking the contemporary dance and music. He created the font – called Octobre in honor of the festival – during his 1993 to 1994 residency at the French Academy of Art at the Villa Medici in Rome. The letters are a stencil shape: mechanical, massive, and designed as if sculpture, with each part emerging slowly from a solid form. The edges look as if they were generated from a bitmap image, with softly defined shapes and overlapping or enlarged pixels spread out on a grid. For the music poster, the letters are pasted like musical notes onto a partitioned grid. Their contrasting sizes suggest an undulating melodic line. The dance poster has a freer, more complex composition, yet it is still precise and balanced. The series received the Gold Award from the Tokyo Type Directors Club in 1995.

Conseil Général de Seine-Martime
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
1995

“October Opens the Season With Music” and “October Makes the Season Dance” are both part of the Octobre en Normandie festival. The experimental typeface Apeloig invented conveys the festival’s essence, evoking the contemporary dance and music. He created the font – called Octobre in honor of the festival – during his 1993 to 1994 residency at the French Academy of Art at the Villa Medici in Rome. The letters are a stencil shape: mechanical, massive, and designed as if sculpture, with each part emerging slowly from a solid form. The edges look as if they were generated from a bitmap image, with softly defined shapes and overlapping or enlarged pixels spread out on a grid. For the music poster, the letters are pasted like musical notes onto a partitioned grid. Their contrasting sizes suggest an undulating melodic line. The dance poster has a freer, more complex composition, yet it is still precise and balanced. The series received the Gold Award from the Tokyo Type Directors Club in 1995.

Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées
120 × 176 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2012

The Théâtre national de Toulouse (TNT; National Theater of Toulouse) is a place where audiences can experience voices, gestures, and words from around the world. The 2012 – 13 poster reveals Apeloig’s original and experimental typography as he creates an allegory for the stage: form and color are fused, with the illusory use of primary hues against a black background creating a pictorial space. The composition consists of seven lines of text, shifting from left to right and swinging horizontally. The overlapping letters create areas of white that recall the sweep of theatrical lights and oscillate between rigid construction and deconstruction. Combined with the vivid palette, the letters’ boisterous contact and intimacy reflect the joy of the season’s festivities. And finally, the names of the artists were inserted inside the letters, like particles of life—without whom the theatrical space would remain empty.

Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2013

In 2013, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, hosted the first retrospective exhibition of Philippe Apeloig, which showed thirty years of creation. In this exhibition, inspired by the publication of the book holding the same name, Philippe Apeloig wanted to highlight his creative process. For the poster, he used a new font designed by him and recently distributed by Swiss foundry Nouvelle Noire. The lines are spread out in the space of the poster, showing Apeloig fascination for movement. The viewer eyes can then rebuilt the letters.

Châtelet, Théâtre Musical de Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2014

Châtelet, Théâtre Musical de Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2013

In 2013, Châtelet presented the 1983 American opera “Sunday in the Park with Georges” by Stephen Sondheim. The scene of the opera takes place into the famous painting “Un après-midi sur l’île de la Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat (1884-1886). The characters’ silhouettes of the painting have been cut out on the poster to create familiar black shapes. The colors used for the rectangles in the background are based on elements of the painting, and create a revival contemporary interpretation of this story-telling image.

Châtelet, Théâtre Musical de Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2012

Châtelet, Théâtre musical de Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2012

Châtelet featured Kodo, a Japanese troupe of “samurai percussionists” that reinterprets and preserves the traditional Japanese art form of taiko. The promotional poster is dominated by a circular shape containing a mitsudomoe, three whirling commalike forms that serve as the Kodo logo. A scattering of lines ricochets across its surface, representing drumsticks. In the four corners of the poster, white tangram or origami-shaped letters spell out “KODO.” The background is solid black, establishing a deep contrast between light and dark that evokes the intensity of the percussionists live performances.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2015

The guest of the 2015 Fête du livre in Aix-en-Provence was Henning Mankell. The Swedish crime novelist, who lived in Sweden and Mozambique, claimed to have “one foot in the sand, and one foot in the snow.” In the poster, these two countries are symbolized by the type, which is partly melting under snow flakes, partly buried in the sand. These elements are rendered with a “bitmap” effect. The center of the composition makes emerge a phenomena of glare, or mystery, evoking the inspiration and the author’s political activism in Europe and Africa.

Conseil Général de Seine-Maritime
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
1988

For its 1986 season, Normandy’s Festival d’été de Seine-Maritime, an avant-garde summer arts festival, sought to redesign its visual identity. Apeloig recognized the graphic potential of the accent marks and punctuation in the title and assigned each mark a different color. A gray acute accent, yellow apostrophe, and red point inform the color palette of the identity and connote the three artistic disciplines showcased in the festival: theater, music, and dance. The vivid, abstract punctuation causes the eye to jump around, creating an almost musical rhythm. These three elements add a playful dimension to the design identity and inspire various iterations of the logo, as well as evoking performers on a stage as seen from above.

Fête du Livre, Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2009

For its 1986 season, Normandy’s Festival d’été de Seine-Maritime, an avant-garde summer arts festival, sought to redesign its visual identity. Apeloig recognized the graphic potential of the accent marks and punctuation in the title and assigned each mark a different color. A gray acute accent, yellow apostrophe, and red point inform the color palette of the identity and connote the three artistic disciplines showcased in the festival: theater, music, and dance. The vivid, abstract punctuation causes the eye to jump around, creating an almost musical rhythm. These three elements add a playful dimension to the design identity and inspire various iterations of the logo, as well as evoking performers on a stage as seen from above.

FIAF French Institute Alliance Française,
New York
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2010

Crossing the Line is an annual fall festival organized and produced by the French Institute–Alliance Française (FIAF) in New York. It is conceived as a platform to present new developments in art and experimental practices from both sides of the Atlantic. The 2010 poster is based on a kinetic effect achieved through successive repetition of the title, a visual allusion to musical and dance works. The letters are made up of numerous punctuation signs that make their lines irregular and out of focus. The letters and words undulate across the page, like brushstrokes or pencil marks.

Châtelet, Théâtre Musical de Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2009

The Châtelet Season main theme in 2009-2010 offered a wide artistic diversity performances with reference to the Broadway musical theaters. The poster design in its sobriety recalls the legendary new york yellow cab body car. Philippe Apeloig’s Châtelet logo (2006) tells us: “châ-te-let”, three syllables laid out like musical notes in this rectangular space, in which the sound rises straight up to the circumflex accent crowning the score.

Agence Française de Développement
(French Development Agency)
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2010

Founded in 1962, Afrique contemporaine is a quarterly academic journal that focuses on the geopolitical challenges facing the African continent. In 2010, Apeloig designed a new logo and promotional materials. For this opportunity he invented the typeface Ndebele, which draws on the South African Ndebele people’s vibrant style of house painting. Apeloig’s all uppercase font has rounded angles and a geometric motif; it consists of stylized forms that are representational but verge on abstraction. The open parts in the letter forms recall textiles and carvings, as well as pottery, vessels, figurines, and toys. The Ndebele font evolved as a quasi-legible type. The fine vertical break in the middle of each letter is progressively enlarged in three stages to create more negative space. The gradual disappearance of a cohesive letter shape creates a complexity that flirts with the decorative arts. The result is a free-for-all optical phenomenon: while the central logo breaks apart at the center of the design, the deconstructed parts scramble to reassemble.

Ville d’Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2006

For the one hundredth anniversary of Paul Cézanne’s death, the city of Aix-en-Provence organized a series of cultural events. Apeloig designed a logo and the promotional printed matters. The geometry underlying Cézanne’s painting inspired the arrangement of the letters in an open square; it was also useful that the exhibition title had the perfect number of characters for this design: Apeloig often counts the letters with the idea to discover such random advantage. Although the name “Cézanne” is fragmented, both “Aix” and “2006”
are intact. Set in a monospace font, the letters alternate between bold and normal weight so as to be suggestive of Cézanne’s pictorial brushwork. It was also rendered in color, alternating between three different hues in Cézanne’s palette: a blue he used for skies, a green,
and the ocher of the Provencal roof tiles. On the poster, the logo repeats, deconstructed, with its missing parts, seeming to reconstruct in an abstract fashion his way of breaking nature down according to a pre-Cubist system…

Ville du Havre
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2006

Severely bombed during World War II, parts of the city of Le Havre, Normandy, were reduced to rubble. Between 1945 and 1964, the architect Auguste Perret led a team to rebuild the city. The effort resulted in pioneering new developments in architecture, technology, and urban planning, with Perret’s contribution now viewed as one of the most complete realizations of Modernism in the twentieth century. In 2005, UNESCO designated Le Havre World Heritage Site. The poster is, firstly, an homage to Perret. With a composition created from the superimposed façades of three of Le Havre’s buildings and rendered in the three primary colors, the poster explores the relationship between the modular grid system, architectural height and width, and the rhythms of patterns. Crosshatched balconies enliven the façades, representing the minimal ornamentation allowed by the architect’s Modernist code. Layered over the window grid, the lettering of the subtitle is regulated and harmonized by the modular system.

Arc en rêve. Architecture, Design, Urban Planning, Bordeaux
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
1991

Architecture Center Arc en rêve in Bordeaux promote social awareness of architecture, urban planning, landscaping, and design, and to improve the quality of living spaces. In 1992, Arc en rêve wanted a promotional poster that would create a dialogue between design, construction, and corporate operations. The poster composition delivered by Apeloig depicts a detail of an imaginary modular structure embodying these traits. Its architectural language is created through layered levels of transparency and nuanced color shifts from pale to dark gray. Together, shadow and light suggest a building under construction. The overall design, founded on a multiplication of bold and fine lines crossing at ninety-degree angles, is mathematically precise yet benefits from free, subjective layering. The use of multiple grids creates a trompe l’oeil effect that simulates both textures and objects. The lines increase in density, some of them escalating into solid black surfaces. Space and lettering are interlaced within a web of formal relations that is impossible to disentangle.

Type Directors Club (TDC) New York
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2007

The “Call for Entries” poster for the 2008 Type Directors Club of New York is composed of four vertical columns. The letters of “typography,” the acronym TDC, and the number 54 (it was the fifty-fourth annual competition) are all divided and aligned within the grid. The simple geometry and straightforward typography impose a poetic dimension on the functional and aesthetic requirements of the contest. The design is a sculptural solution governed by emotional relationships that are expressed through light and shadow, solids and voids, transparency and pure typography. By masking part of each letter and rendering it as a shadowed form, Apeloig manifests light as a graphic material, a metaphor for the emergence of young talent onto the honorific stage – recognized and illuminated.

French Navigable Waterways
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Dubois Imagerie)
2003

In 2003, the public institution Voies navigables de France (Navigable Waterways of France) curated an exhibition in Rouen, Normandy of vintage sailboats, barges, and small-scale models of watercraft. The title of the exhibition, “Bateaux sur l’eau, rivières et canaux” (Boats on the Water, Rivers, and Canals), was inspired by a verse from an old children’s counting rhyme. The poster design relies on creative typography to convey the thematic content while playing with the spatial relationship between words and empty space. The monochrome blue background implies water and the type’s elongated segments float through the poster, conjuring images of barges and their reflections in the water. The partially submerged words disappear like the hulls of boats beneath the surface, creating depth and volume. Despite its flatness, it achieves the illusion of a distant horizon through its precise composition. By creating an impression of slow motion,
the design depicts an abstract landscape that is peaceful and still.

Gallerie Didier Imbert, Paris
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
1992

Even the letters of his name form a sculpture! Composed of wide curves and volumes like his work, the insides of the “O” reminding us of the focus of his shapes, and the strong strokes of the “M” evoking the arms of a reclining character. Even better, isn’t this typographic block a near image of Moore himself, comfortably seated, inviting us, with his mute “E,” to enter the intimate space of his house and workshop in Much Hadham, just outside of London? A luminous offer over a dark background… And we are reminded how much the sculptor liked to work outside, making his pieces larger so they might be placed in the hilly terrain around his home. Apeloig softened the photograph of the Moore’s house into a soft, shadowy backdrop on which the massive letters loom in the front garden.

Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2010

Early on in the design process, Apeloig realized that Cassandre’s famous YSL logotype (1961) would provide the main graphic element of his poster. Apeloig wanted to express the soul of the designer, not promote the brand. This original Cassandre drawing was handmade, with discernible, delicate brush marks. Apeloig brought it to life by reversing the color shading, which also gave the brushstrokes the illusion of three dimensions. The palette’s proportions and yellow, red, and blue color scheme derive from a 1965 Yves Saint Laurent “Mondrian” dress. A detail of a 1960s photograph of Saint Laurent was used for the poster’s background. It was reproduced using a large dot screen, evoking not only newsprint but also silkscreen – specifically, Andy Warhol’s emblematic 1972 portrait of his friend.

Hermès
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2013

The Saut Hermès (Hermès Jumping), held at the Grand Palais in Paris, is an elite competition of world-class show jumping. Hermès commissioned Apeloig to design the poster for the 2013 event. Expressive typography dominates with each letter seemingly caught mid-jump. The characters exercise within a spatial void filled only with the signature color of Hermès: a pure orange. The letterforms vary in weight from bold to extra light, a subtle modulation that intensifies the energy of the composition. The capital As are the most strenuous – real hurdlers – with legs set at oblique angles. The lines of text are interwoven with a spare drawing depicting a rider on a jumping horse. The duo is modeled out of short black lines and enters the picture plane from the left, moving forcefully to the right. The angling of the clean, tapered black strokes creates a sense of forward momentum and speed. The drawing is interwoven with the letters so that the two elements overlap and penetrate one another — an edgy equilibrium remains between them.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2011

American fashion designer Ralph Lauren’s collection of vintage and new sports cars were put on view in Paris. The exhibition provided an overview of European automotive history, showing an industrial art form forged from innovative engineering. Three photographic perspectives of the Jaguar XKD imply movement and speed, as its sleek fragmented body appears to zoom across the surface. The typographic placement underscores this visual movement through a zigzag reading pattern. Cut in half and reading right to left, the title text counterbalances the car’s crosswise motion. The elegant, light construction of the stenciled letters references the brand’s status, as well as its cars’ lavish aesthetics and inventiveness. The bespoke typeface has become “Coupé”, which is distributed by Swiss foundry Nouvelle Noire, and used for this present exhibition’s poster.

The Fine Arts National Institute of Mexico
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2008

2007 marked the one hundredth anniversary of Frida Kahlo’s birth and the fiftieth anniversary of Diego Rivera’s death. To celebrate their lives, one hundred posters designed by members of the AGI, Alliance Graphique Internationale, were exhibited in Mexico City in 2008. Philippe Apeloig took a text-based approach for his poster. The capital A at the end of “FRIDA” begins the word “AND,” which is completed by the capital D of “DIEGO.” Split in two on either side of the backward slash, the subtitle, “Creative Love,” appears printed vertically in small type to form the two upward strokes of the N in “AND”; the backward slash positioned between them completes the letter. The colors for the poster are inspired by Kahlo’s emblematic blue house. Its lush blue is accented with the plush pink of its window frames. The lettering has been treated to look like a bold stencil with irregularities. Its rough look and the weathering effect applied to the background make the poster read like a section of decaying wall. The passion and tension inherent in Kahlo and Rivera’s relationship are implied by the deep cuts used to construct the letters. The central pink slash alludes to their narcissism, serving as both mirror and divider.

Cultures France
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2005

In 2005, France held “BrésilBrésils”, a yearlong festival celebrating Brazilian culture. The s at the end of the second “Brésil” evokes the country’s multiculturalism and its wealth of folk traditions. The logo (repeated several times in the poster) consists of stacked, vertically condensed capital letters. The vivid colors, as in the Brazilian flag, and the graphic design reference Brazilian Neoconcretism (1959 – 61), a movement that took inspiration from Concrete Art but broke with its rigor. The title words are split into blocks of mirrored letters, like sound typography, and create a bouncing rhythm inspired by samba and bossa nova. The letters’ alignment and spacing create relief
and the impression of depth, which also comes from the alternating positive/negative treatment of individual characters. The characters B, E and I merge to form hybrids. The poster design hint at a culture in constant motion and flux – and at a festival honoring that extraordinary vitality.

Châtelet, Théâtre Musical de Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2014

The famous Hollywood movie, An American in Paris (1951) by Vicente Minelli was presented on stage in the main musical theatre for its world premiere in Paris. It is a romantic love between an American painter who arrives in Paris and falls in love with a young dancer. The music was composed by one of the most famous jazz composer in America, Georges Gershwin. The choreography was revolutionary at this time, and that’s the reason why the movie won an academy award in Hollywood. Inspired by many French artists who represented the Eiffel Tower in their art, such as the painter Robert Delaunay, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire or the photographer Robert Doisneau, Philippe Apeloig designed his own Eiffel Tower, made with typography, almost like a logo. Here, the typography personifies the monument. Apeloig made the Eiffel tower dancing, like a ballroom dancing couple.

Waterways of France
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2013

The Voies navigables de France (VNF; Waterways of France) exploits, maintains, modernizes, and develops French waterways. Its role also includes the promotion of goods transport and waterways tourism. In 2013, VNF commissioned the Apeloig studio to create a new visual identity. Inspired by light reflecting from the surface of water, the promotional poster is composed of horizontal and softly angled particles in a palette of soft blue, dark blue, and green against a white background. The particles appear in three sets of light, medium, and bold, representing long, mid-range, and close-up views. Each set is arranged within its own visual field and follows a grid that has a different number of columns: five, four, and three. The design has multiple connotations: the geographic disposition of rivers, streams, and canals in France; the navigation of barges and boats; the light-reflecting qualities of water; and the fluid movement of rivers and tributaries.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris
100 × 150 cm
Offset (Jacques London)
1987

The Musée d’Orsay’s first exhibition subject was the architecture and urban design of Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. After a fire destroyed much of the city in 1871, Chicago came to symbolize the “new world,” providing architects with the unparalleled opportunity to rebuild the city and design buildings using the latest engineering technologies. Apeloig’s poster captures the Windy City’s progressive architecture and jazzy vibe and features an archival photograph by J. W. Taylor. The entire image is tilted to create a sense of vertigo. The word “Chicago” runs between the skyscrapers, folding to follow the direction of the streets, culminating with a capital O that emphasizes the O in “d’Orsay.” The poster’s design effectively beckons visitors to the exhibition with its dynamic text, tilted eagle’s-eye view, and sense of bustling movement and energy.

Musée du Louvre, Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen on chrome-plated celluloid, (Sérica)
1998

In 1999, the tenth anniversary of the I.M. Pei’s Louvre glass pyramid was celebrated. The poster created to commemorate the event focused on its essential infrastructure and its spirit: transparency, economy, and brilliance. The diamond-shaped design, built of identical squares reminiscent of the pyramid’s glass panels, was inspired by an original drawing by Pei. The poster implies two simultaneous views: a cross-section as seen from the courtyard and the whole as seen from above. With a letter at each corner of each square, the words are read on diagonal lines slanting to the upper righthand corner on a 45-degree angle. Reaching the end of a line, the information continues to the next one to create a continuous stream of letters. The alternating black-and-white words and the visual threads connecting the structure direct our reading from bottom left to top right.

Châtelet, Théâtre musical de Paris
100 × 150 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2013

Châtelet presented the 1946 American opera Street Scene by Kurt Weill. The story depicts life in a Lower East Side tenement between one evening and the following afternoon. Through expressive lettering, Apeloig’s poster turns the title into a New York City stoop, the ubiquitous stage and frontrow seat for urban theater. A low-tech approach was used to create it: paper stencils of each letter in the words “street” and “scene” were made and folded twice. These were then assembled and stacked, their cumulative folds creating a flight of steps lit as if by a single streetlight and seen from a receding angle. The irregularities of the handmade letters catch the light less predictably than would smooth surfaces. The harsh, unforgiving nature of the urban landscape is evoked through strongly contrasting black and white, light and shadow.

Kentucky University, United States
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Arts Graphiques de France)
2000

“The Poster: Celebrating the Poster” was a group exhibition of internationally renowned designers held at Eastern Kentucky University in 2000. The exhibition poster illustrates how abstract typography and a reductive formal language can create narrative simply and powerfully. It portrays a grid of nine rectangular forms in a gray environment. The front of each is white. The corners are folded, revealing the backs – colored fuchsia, yellow, green, blue – and defining letters through these angled edges and the suggestion of curves. While not instantly legible, the blocky letters and words gradually come into view to spell out “The Poster.” The lettering is built on a strict mathematical grid without sitting straight within its visual field. Each letter tilts and shakes, creating a sort of delirium that awakens the reader’s eye. The names of the participating designers are placed in small type inside each letter, allowing the poster to be read on multiple levels at once.

Les Écritures Croisées & Ville d‘Aix-en-Provence
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Lézard Graphique)
2014

Typo Apeloig is an exhibition that took place in the city public library of Aix-en-provence, South of France, in 2014-2015. The poster is a crossword between Apeloig’s family name and the first two syllabus of the word “Typography”. The way the type is put in place in the poster uses the randomness of the two common letters that both words share: the “P“ and the “O». When the letters overleap, with the use of the red and the blue colors, it creates parts of a rectangle, as the space of the blank page where starts the design concept.

Museum of Russian Art, Kiev
Institut français d’Ukraine
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (5e Couleur)
2005

The posters for the 2005 exhibition “Typo/Typé” on Apeloig’s work, which was held in Kiev’s Museum of Russian Art, showcase the designer’s original bespoke typeface designed in 2004 for the exhibition “Of the Lorraine: History, Memory, a Contemporary Look”. The typeface is composed of layer upon layer of transparent colors that create complex vibrating patterns and systems in unlimited combinations, implying time and movement. The center of the poster hold the exhibition title “Typo/Typé,” a bit of rhyming wordplay with layers of symbolism that echo the constructed letterforms. “Typo” (type) represents the designer’s passion, while “Typé” (of a recognizable type) refers to his own lineage. For Apeloig, design and typography hold unlimited rhythmic potential that can be harnessed to create meaningful art. His imaginative strategies are intended to transform the design profession, pushing it toward pure artistic expression.

Studio Philippe Apeloig
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Dubois Imagerie)
2003

Apeloig has always found inspiration in American art: Wall drawings by Sol LeWitt, three-dimensional geometric forms by Donald Judd, and Minimalist arrangements by Carl Andre are a few of the works that have challenged him and impacted his design. Minimalism has encouraged in him a certain sobriety, an interest in creating series, and exploring mathematical progression. The design for the 2003 exhibition of his posters shown in Ljubljana, Slovenia, suggests an architectural plan viewed from above, perhaps one for a pyramid. Though perfectly flat, it implies depth. The composition follows the principle of Russian nesting dolls. It also references the ephemeral nature of posters in public spaces – on the street a poster becomes the substrate for new posters of diverse styles and levels of expertise, layering memory upon memory, until the last poster covers all the rest.

Studio Philippe Apeloig
118 × 175 cm
Silkscreen (Sérica)
2008

“Vivo in Typo” is a declaration of poetic art. Philippe Apeloig lives in and through Typeface and brings it vividly to life. The world of signs in which he creates is at once mobile, whimsical, dynamic and an embodiment of his deepest convictions, both artistic and political. To create the woven grids that appear on his “Vivo in Typo” poster and his poster for the 2010 Crossing the Line Festival, Apeloig overlapped punctuation marks and abstract letters selected for their forms: the vertical stroke of a capital I, the square shape of a capital
L, and the almost perfect circle of a lower-case o. He repeated these letters several times, varying their weights and point sizes, blending and overlaying them, intervening with their kerning and line spacing, all in order to create dense meshes – surfaces that play with light
and shadow as if drawn on grainy paper with a Cont. crayon. Where there’s texture, there can also be transparency, and words can be erased or super-imposed to grasp their meaning.