Typorama

A beguiling, beautiful and hefty tome, Typorama covers the graphic work of designer Philippe Apeloig.

Typorama cover
Typorama cover

Apeloig began his design career at the Musee d’Orsay in 1985, creating the exhibition poster for the museum’s first ever show, Chicago, Birth of a Metropolis, pictured below:

Musee d'Orsay
Musee d’Orsay

The designer is best know for his poster work and typography – hence the book’s title – creating the Octobre and Drop typefaces.

Armada de Rouen poster
Armada de Rouen poster

Typorama charts Apeloig’s graphic design process and philosophy, covering posters, logos, visual identities, books and animations, shown next to the things that influenced their creation and the steps taken to producing the final designs.

The book has been designed, typeset and edited by Swiss graphic designer Tino Grass, and features contributions from La Verriere-Hermes art director Alice Morgaine and Ellen Lupton, curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.

Bateaux
Bateaux

Among the book’s many visual highlights is this poster for a 2010 Yves Saint Laurent exhibition, which uses the fashion label’s iconic logo in a sensitive, clever graphic design using gouache-and-ink:

Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent

Another fashion house Apeloig created poster designs for was Hermes, in this striking orange show-jumping promotional image, which uses broken lettering caught ‘mid-jump’ to symbolize horse and rider in action:

Hermes
Hermes

In contrast, we love the striking, vertical monochrome approach Apeloig took to create a new logo for Venice’s University Institute of Architecture in 2004:

Venice's University Institute of Architecture
Venice’s University Institute of Architecture

And the sublime use of typography to create the image of American writer Philip Roth, on the poster for the 1999 Fete du livre. According to the book, the ‘laborious process of typographic modeling echoes Roth’s prolific output, his obsessive nature, and his own experience of psychoanalysis’:

Philip Roth
Philip Roth

In the foreword to the book, Jean-Jaques Aillagon writes, ‘Apeloig has an insatiable  appetite for art, photography, cinema, architecture, literature, dance and music, all of which he draws upon in his work.’

Aillagon adds, ‘As collected here, Apeloig’s works illustrate the development of graphic design’s tools and techniques over the last four decades’.

Typorama is published by Thames & Hudson priced £48.

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