Le que suis-je … et le qui es-tu by Simon Durville (Stock, 1972)
Cover of the original French edition of Simon Durville’s Le que suis-je … et le qui es-tu? (“What am I … and who are you?”), published by Stock in Paris, 1972, with illustrations by Jean-Jacques Boyer. The cover design is credited to Pierre Faucheux (1924–1999).
For the title, Faucheux selected Sans Serif Shaded, featuring its distinctive Q. The playful chromatic setting includes type in a glyph, a wavy hyphen, and alternating colors for the first three words. The shaded caps are combined with Helvetica, a question mark from Cooper Black, and a red manicule of unknown origin (pointing to a charted face of a man who appears to very skeptical about the whole matter). Below the title, there are two handwriting samples with the same text – l’écriture, le visage, les mains, les astres, les rêves … des tests … un jeu (“handwriting, face, hands, stars, dreams … tests … a game”) – and various symbols sandwiching the publisher’s name.
The book covers various topics intended to get a better understanding of oneself and of others – albeit through pseudoscientific and esoteric means, from dream analysis to physiognomy, palmistry, graphology, and astrology.
Faucheux made the design very big. In fact it’s so big that it’s unfortunately affected by the groove of the binding – this copy being an extreme case.
2 Comments on “Le que suis-je … et le qui es-tu by Simon Durville (Stock, 1972)”
The “charted face of a man who appears to be very skeptical about the whole matter” seems to me like a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci…
Absolutely! I couldn’t find a perfect match, but these two anatomical studies are definitely related.