In 2023, French graphic design studio Ultragramme designed the visual identity of the Biennale de danse du Val-de-Marne. This festival takes place in la briqueterie – their identity was also designed by Ultragramme. This place, entirely dedicated to dance, is labeled Centre de Développement Chorégraphique National (CDCN) by the Ministry of Culture and Communication. As a tool for cultural decentralization, the mission of the CDCN is to support choreographic creation and research, to disseminate works throughout the territory, to mediate towards the public, and to train and integrate dancers into the workforce.

From the briqueterie website:

The 22nd Val-de-Marne Dance Biennial resolutely cultivates the multiple nuances of dance. Irradiated by the artistic vitality of the South, it invites you to discover a great diversity of works brought together in three porous and intertwined components: celebration, transmission and imagination.

In addition to Söhne, the typeface usually used for the briqueterie identity, Ultragramme chose BVH Doc Script for the Biennale identity. BVH Doc Script brings a vibration, the spontaneity of a gesture reminiscent of dancers’ bodies. It is also a connection, a call to urbanity and youth, that counterbalances the Swiss and strict aspect of Söhne.

Ultragramme had the desire to move away from the previous identities, based on the choice of an image representing the whole event, reproduced and displayed everywhere. Instead, they wanted to build a system without a unique visual. They show the richness and plurality of languages by proposing a series of backgrounds for the posters. They are designed to function alone or in series (proposal to hang them by 2, 3 or 4). These backgrounds are composed of different types of colourful lines, movements and occupations of space: undulations, breathing, interlacing, tremors, curves, disturbances, etc.

The program covers are cut out of the poster’s background and then printed in black with the title. This economy of means allows for diversity, randomness, unpredictability and pushes forward this idea of avoiding one single visual to represent the event.

Prose Postérieure (litteraly: Bottom Prose) is a raw extract from an aerobics instructor’s email inbox. Twenty-five emails from Laëtitia Jasserand were selected and put in book form, following the chronology of the first two years of Sprot (a new, less known but also less boring discipline than its first cousin sport). Both a teacher's diary and instructions for preparing for classes and other events, the emails depict in a nutshell the extravagant life of a Brussels community, sprotive and festive.

Emails are typeset with Dia family and a set of original Apple emoji. Title and chapter openings are set in all caps Origin Super Condensed.

Published by Les Commissaires Anonymes.

Pôle Culturel is a theater in Alfortville, France. For the new identity Ultragramme Studio used GT Haptik to attract a younger and more popular audience, while maintaining a connection with their core audience.

Since 1994 in France, researchers, critics and professionals have shared their viewpoints and their researches on the major themes that animate the graphic design field in the annual publication Graphisme en France. The 21st issue adresses the topic of artistic direction for press and magazines, through the contributions of Angelo Cirimele, Francesco Franchi, Pierre Ponant and Véronique Vienne.

Young studio Ultragramme was chosed to design the journal. Through their choices of paper, layout, printing and typography, they've implemented a number of codes directly inspired by those of the press and magazines.

The layout is based on a modular grid that allows text to be set alternatively on two, three or four columns. In the same way, titles are successively centered, floated right, then left.

Three typefaces are used across the whole publication: Trianon, Origin Super Condensed & Wigrum. Each typeface is alternately used for titles, texts, as well as notes and epigraphs.

Part of the publication was printed in spot colors (dark blue, red and neon yellow), alternating pages in monochrome, two-color and three-color.

The publication is available for download in English and in French.