Essais & Documents series, Éditions Le Pommier
Essais & Documents is a long-running series of paperbacks by French publisher Le Pommier, covering topics like philosophy, sciences, ecology, society, education, and more. In 2009, Bianca Gumbrecht of Lunapark relaunched the design of the book series. For the cover typography, she selected Kursivschrift, a peculiar (partly) joined-up italic with roots in German cartographic design. The family includes Liegend (oblique, lit. “lying”) and Rückwärts Liegend (backslanted or reverse oblique, lit. “backwards lying”) styles. The latter used to be a common choice for labeling rivers and other bodies of water in maps. Gumbrecht exclusively works with the Stehend (upright, lit. “standing”) style of Kursivschrift. The German origin of this design is evident in the v and w with their fraktur-like closed counters.
The titles and authors’ names were initially set in all lowercase letters, interlaced with lines in much smaller caps from Underware’s sans serif Auto. These lines double-serve as underlines. Most volumes feature grey and colored type on white, but there are also colored covers with type in grey and white. The most recent additions to the series use conventional casing and abandon the smaller interlines.
Morales espiègles – Michel Serres (2019)
Fonctionner ou exister ? – Miguel Benasayag (2018)
Et si on pensait aux animaux ? – François Moutou (2018)
La mémoire au futur – Francis Eustache (ed.) (2018)
Abécédaire citoyen des sciences – Marie-Françoise Chevallier-Le Guyader (2017)
Éthique et changement climatique – Olivier Abel, Édouard Bard et al. (2015)
Le gorille invisible. Quand nos intuitions nous jouent des tours – Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons (2015)
La sagesse ordinaire – Jean-Michel Besnier (2016)
Petite Poucette – Michel Serres (2012)
C’était mieux avant ! – Michel Serres (2017)
Darwin, Bonaparte et le Samaritain. Une Philosophie de l’Histoire – Michel Serres (2016)
Le Tiers-Instruit – Michel Serres (2018)
Le Contrat naturel – Michel Serres (2018)
Itinéraire d’un robot tueur – Marie-des-Neiges Ruffo (2018)
Dans l’œil du pigeon – Luc-Alain Giraldeau (2016)
