This book written by Maurice Darmon and published by the Bordeaux-based publisher 202 éditions is about the films made by Anne-Marie Miéville between 1976 et 2002. It is the first monograph devoted solely to her own work. As Jean-Luc Godard’s partner since the 1970s, her collaborative work with the filmmaker has been more widely distributed and recognized. Designer Paule Palacios-Dalens used Borges (by Loche, PampaType) for all main texts and titles, and Akzidenz-Grotesk (Berthold, 1898) for pagination and some subtitles. The cover titling is set in Punto (by Arne Freytag, Fontador).

Written by Michel Vianey, edited by Maurice Darmon and designed in Paris by Paule Palacios-Dalens, this is another little gem of a paperback book produced by the small independent publishing imprint 202 éditions. This book is part of the series dedicated to cinema, in particular to Jean-Luc Godard and the Nouvelle Vague movement.

The typography combines lettering from Godard movies with two period correct typefaces and a contemporary serif type family. Peignot (Cassandre, 1937) and Antique Olive Nord (by Roger Excoffon, Olive, 1962) are both used for section titles, subtitles, and other details. Borges (Alejandro Lo Celso, PampaType, 2002, revamped in 2022) are used for body copy.

Hiroshima dans la Blanche. L’introduction de Marguerite Duras au cinéma is a nice, little book authored by Paule Palacios-Dalens and published in 2015 by the French independent imprint 202 éditions. Part of a series dedicated to cinema, this text highlights Marguerite Duras’ first film script (Hiroshima mon amour) and the publication of its screenplay under Gallimard’s famous Blanche collection, which marks the beginning of a new literary genre.

Designed by the author using Architype Renner (The Foundry’s revival of Paul Renner’s Futura from 1927) in titles and subtitles combined with Borges (Alejandro Lo Celso, PampaType, 2002, revamped in 2022) for all main texts. Book interior photos by Nathalie Guyon.

Written by Jacques Aumont, edited by Maurice Darmon and finely designed in Paris by Paule Palacios-Dalens, this is another little gem of a paperback book produced by the small independent publishing imprint 202 éditions. This book is part of the series dedicated to cinema, this time on Godard and the Nouvelle Vague movement. It uses Antique Olive Nord (by Roger Excoffon, Olive) on the cover and for interior subtitles, Borges (Alejandro Lo Celso, PampaType) in the main text, Borges Título Hueca in the section titlings, and Akzidenz-Grotesk (Berthold) in the footnotes.

In 1960, French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo rose to international fame through the success of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, in which he co-starred with Jean Seberg (1938–1979).

This quad poster (30″×40″) was made for a British re-release in the 1980s [Dwyer] by Recorded Releasing Company. The title is shown in giant red caps from Filmotype Gable with an added drop shadow, and not aligned to a common baseline. The original French title, À Bout de Soffle (“out of breath”), uses the same typeface, or maybe the slightly lighter sibling style, Galaxy. These anonymous phototype designs came with a number of alternate glyphs, including two forms for S, one with a sloping middle part and one where it’s almost horizontal. Galaxy, Gable, and the bolder Garfield and Gamma were copied by VGC as B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, and subsequently digitized by URW under the names Bee One to Four.

Thanks to their supereconomic proportions, this font series is commonly used for the credits on movie posters, where actor/studio contracts stipulate a minimum height, but not width. In this case, though, the beanpoles play the lead.

The names in blue are set in Alternate Gothic No. 2. All other type including the blurbs (“Seriously stylish … outrageously sexy”) and the small credits are in Trade Gothic Extended (or maybe News Gothic Extended, which is virtually identical).

Jean-Paul Belmondo passed away today in Paris at the age of 88. Rest in peace.

Detail.

Detail.

Polish poster for Federico Fellini’s 8½ (Otto e mezzo), 1963.

Do you know what an LTypI is? If you are a type nerd, then the answer is probably yes. Coined by Ivo Gabrowitsch and Stephen Coles, the term denotes and ridicules those typographic finds where the text reads the same as the name of the typeface it is rendered in. The brand name is Cooper? Let’s do the logo in Cooper Black. What to use for the Broadway theater? Morris Fuller Benton’s Broadway, of course! The sign of a souvenir shop looks best in … well, you get the idea.

Ben Mitchell found a perfect LTypI in Brighton, starring Ed Benguiat’s ITC Souvenir.

A takeoff on “ATypI”, LTypI stands for “Lack of Typographic Imagination”, as it seems that the designers — if you want to call them that — couldn’t be bothered with selecting an appropriate typeface, but rather lazily picked one from their font menu solely because of its name. Over on Flickr, almost one hundred LTypI examples have been collected so far. Some of them are outrageous (Rotisserie in Rotis Serif), some more subtle (Goudy for Gaudí).

And then there are a few that don’t really deserve that snide name. Frutiger’s doorbell is set in Frutiger — well, what else? Probably the most beautiful example of such an alleged LTypI comes from the Argentinian designer Juan Ignacio Scocozza.

Two posters advertise the “Ciclo Nouvelle Vague” (50×70 cm)

Scocozza created the visual identity for a film festival that deals with the Caméra Stylo (the pen camera), an idea that is central to the auteur theory of the French New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague. There, the role of the director was considered to be the one of a writer, and the camera to be his pen. What could be more adequate than an idiosyncratic script typeface? And, on top of that, one that is inspired by 1950s France?

The festival’s logo resembles an old film reel.

Scocozza searched hard, and found a perfect face: a fresh release by Elena Albertoni, less obvious than good old Mistral, “energetic, loose, occasionally edgy, and with quite a soupçon of retro”, as Indra Kupferschmid put it in her review. Its name? Nouvelle Vague. While this choice technically qualifies as LTypI, it is not unimaginative at all. Ruling out a typeface because of its name is as wrong as choosing it for that reason. With his work for the “Festival de Cinéma Caméra Stylo”, Scocozza proves that a conscious, nominal LTypI sometimes is just the right thing to do.

The three program leaflets contain the daily schedule, a synopsis of the screened film, and a biography of the director.

The printed matter comprises posters, program leaflets, and postcards. All items are visually united by a graphic style that, like the typeface, epitomizes a cinematic French retro feeling:

For the color palette, I mostly used red, white and blue, like in the French Tricolore. The desaturated tones contribute to the desired vintage atmosphere. Objects, faces, bodies, and landscapes are depicted in a graphical language that is mostly linear, simulating the use of a fountain pen and the artist’s own freehand, with the ink and its splashes being vital elements of the visual identity. — Juan Ignacio Scocozza

The postcards depict iconic scenes from the movies (15×10 cm).