Poster for Mutation de la Caserne de Reuilly, 2017

In fall 2017, Kreuz was not yet released. Pierre Vanni, art director and graphic designer in Paris, took Emmanuel Besse’s upcoming typeface for a spin, and put it to imaginative use for the poster announcing a conference at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal.

This event titled Mutation de la Caserne de Reuilly was concerned with the transformation of the Reuilly baracks, a former military complex in the 12th arrondissement that was converted into 600 housing units.

Vanni exclusively used type, and employed all three widths of Kreuz: the Condensed, the medium-wide, and the Extended, always in all caps. For the title, he arranged the words on an arc, skewing the individual letterforms to evoke a perspective effect. This can be read as an allusion to the architectural theme, and at the same time to the conference as a place where various participants come together to examine a topic from different angles.

Kreuz is a typeface of industrial roots, with letterforms that combine angular and smooth outlines, evoking nuts and bolts. Here it is paired with a font that’s even more technical, and comes straight out of AutoCAD software: it’s the monolinear Proxy by Autodesk.

In 2019, after Kreuz was officially made available by Production Type, Vanni reused the basic design for another urbanism-related event at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal. That conference accompanied the exhibition Transformations pavillonnaires (“Suburban transformations”) which presented a pilot project in Arcueil, a town in the southern suburbs of Paris.

Stills from an animated version used to advertise the event online

Stills from an animated version used to advertise the event online

Poster for Transformations pavillonnaires, 2019