La Ronde is an eclectic mix of artistic visions (video, photography, volume, performance, poetry, etc.). Each proposal is presented on two or even three sites. La Ronde is also a unique opportunity for artists to meet and talk to each other.

Launched for the first time in January 2016, on the occasion of the creation of the Réunion des Musées Métropolitains, La Ronde is a special time of the year that allows visitors to discover all the museums from a new, shared perspective, and also to keep abreast of contemporary creation.

For over two months, the region's museums open their doors to all forms of contemporary culture, from visual arts to performance art, and to both established and emerging artists. Each year, the RMM offers a unique encounter between today's artists and its masterpieces of ancient art, bringing together the arts and the public.

For the sixth edition in 2022, the exhibition boards make early use of WS Adapt.

Nadja, Un itinéraire surréaliste is an exhibition that was shown at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Rouen.

Designers Arthur Calame and Raphaël de La Morinerie comment:

This exhibition traces the life and work of Nadja, through the novel of the same name by André Breton. The exhibition shows original drawings and letters by Nadja, Breton's manuscripts and numerous Surrealist works. In order to create an expressive and appropriate signage, we have mixed two graphic universes present in the exhibition: the graphic codes of the book and Nadja’s handwriting and drawings.

Poster staging the Vibrants Défricheurs’ logotype, enriched with illustrations. The logotype is indeed a lettering piece based on Origin Super Condensed Black and its Backslant version. It’s playful and lively with a jumping baseline, upside-down letters and custom fancyful ligatures. Find a version without illustrations further below.

The name of this artist’s collective based in Rouen, France, is hard to translate. While everyone will understand vibrant, the verb défricher can mean to make land arable by clearing wood, but also to prepare for a bigger task, to lay ground for something.

With this in mind, one understands better the complex mission stated by the associations’ adherents, ranging from musicians to performing and visual artists to technicians and volunteers. Cross-over, improvisation and the fusion of artistic disciplines is at the very heart of their work. They aim at reaching out to the most diverse audiences with their events and are committed to their local community, organizing projects at schools and in hospitals. Apart from that, the Vibrants Défricheurs founded their own music label called Label Vibrant.

In this post you get to see various graphic design projects directed by Julien Lelièvre since 2016, from logotype to CD sleeve. What they have in common is the mix of two sans-serif typefaces released by Production Type: Origin Super Condensed, sporting a back-slanted italic, and Gemeli Micro, characterized by its pronounced inktraps.

A first glance at the leaflet presenting the association and its projects, at the print shop. Unfolded, the cover can serve as a poster.

Inside the leaflet the projects are featured. The headlines are set in Origin Super Condensed Black, the reading text uses Gemeli Micro.

Cover of the folded leaflet, using two styles of Gemeli Micro

CD sleeve for Isles, the debut album of the band YOU, published by Label Vibrant, featuring different styles of Origin Super Condensed.

Catalog presenting the projects of Les Vibrants Défricheurs, realized in two Pantone colors with a ring binding, and featuring another illustrated version of the logotype

Shown in the upper left corner is the logotype without intertwined illustrations.

As a graphic principle, the descriptive text (left) uses Origin Super Condensed for the headline and Gemini Micro for continuous reading, set left-aligned. To the right a composition made from a photograph, an illustration and large letters from Origin which are partly obscured by the imagery.

The sense of lecture is not in spreads but recto-verso: titles on the right announce the project that is described on the following left page. The tall shapes of Origin Super Condensed have been elongated even further for “YOU” – Origin Hyper Condensed?

Poster advertising a concert of Papanosh, one of the association’s projects. An illustrative chart is being inserted into the counter of the O, giving the rotated word a three-dimensional look.

Brochure for Le Percé Plafond, a project mixing sound and image projection. The artists perform in hospitals to brighten up the patients’ day. The words on the cover are arranged in various orientations around the circular die cut.

Brochure for Le Percé Plafond with a circular die cut in the front cover, revealing the illustration on the page below

Interior pages from the brochure for Le Percé Plafond, with text set in Gemeli Micro

Back cover of the brochure for Le Percé Plafond

The visual identity of Hangar23, a performance hall in Rouen was designed by Thomas Huot-Marchand from 2011 until 2016. The silhouette of the hangar, as well as its environment — the port, the containers and the Seine quays — inspired the logo and the visual of the first season (2011–12).

Poster by Philippe Apeloig for an exhibition during the fourth edition of the Armada Rouen, a tall ships parade organised by Voies navigables de France (French Waterways).

Every year since 2010, Rouen’s collective HSH Crew organizes a night in l'Omnia cinema, screening 8 animation shorts. Julien Lelièvre, responsible for the design of the festival since its first edition, conceived a very simple system turning a big number 8 into a pair of eyes, adding infos in a left-right-up-down fashion. Then illustrators from the crew freely turned the eyes into several characters and drawings, creating a set of illustrations to use in the event communication.

In 2017, Temeraire was chosen as the typeface for the festival communication.

Thomas Huot-Marchand created the visual identity of Rouen’s theater, L'Étincelle, with his Minérale typeface, available on www.205.tf. Minérale is paired with Sandrine Nugue’s Infini, another recent French typeface design with similar lapidary qualities.

Detail from the L’Étincelle homepage

Detail from the program overview on the website

In À L’Antique (French for “in the antique manner”) Frac Normandie Rouen and Musée des Antiquités Rouen bring together contemporary art and masterpieces from the antiquity. The exhibition is structured in fifteen chapters, going from ancient funeral rituals to archeology as a practice for contemporay artists. The texts are are composed in Gerard Unger’s Alverata, an interpretation of romanesque letterforms. Designed by Jérôme Knebusch. The full booklet can be read here (texts in French).