Chevalvert

What is the story of the studio ? SB: When we first met, Patrick was working with Julie Rousset and Mytil Ducomet. They were kind of a first version of Chevalvert. Today Julie is working as a freelance graphic designer and Mytil is a part of Atelier Müesli, which he founded with Léa Chapon in 2008. At the beginning we were only in contact for purely practical reasons. I was friend with Julie, who contacted me to conduct one of their web projects, and this is how everything started. By spending more time together, Patrick and I were able to exchange about our lives, our careers, our studies, he at Estienne and I at La Martinière Diderot. We noticed a real synergy both in our skills and in our way of thinking at that time. PP: From there we decided to form a duo. Stéphane was living in Lyon at that time, he joined me in Montreuil so that we can start working together. Then we both moved to Paris.

How did your duo evolve ? PP: We have never had a specific objective, we have always kept our own pace. We were not too demanding in terms of type of clients we had, we were doing our work without asking ourselves any question. We started to evolve and our projects became more and more interesting. We were not focused on a particular field, cultural, industrial or private. Our clients mainly came from meetings, from our network. We often participated to Rencontres de Lure, which allowed us to exchange with other graphic designers but also to discover other practices… and this is partly thanks to these meetings that we knew what we truly wanted to do. When we worked in Montreuil we shared our space. This is how we had the chance to meet David, manager of one of the agencies, and we quickly asked him to collaborate with us. This period marked the beginning of a new operating mode for Chevalvert. As we were three, we had to confront our ideas even more and work differently. We worked together with two other design studios at that time, Polygraphik and Jean Robert, who finally decided to move, it allowed us to invest new spaces. After six years of work as freelance graphic designers, we decided to create our own society. Indeed, the organization and distribution of the projects became more and more complicated and we were forced to refuse some projects because we did not have the agency status. The foundation of this society was the third turn of Chevalvert. Unfortunately, David passed away shortly afterwards… It has been very hard for us. Maxime, who was working with us at that time, was here to help us. Then we hired Camille, our new manager, and then Vincent and Julia. Today we finally start to find some stability, we take more strategic decisions. We take the time to think about what we want and don't want, we care about relationships with our clients and we do our best to make projects that we like.

Where does this transversal approach in your work come from ? SB: This transversality is a fundamental part of our studio simply because we are not interested in the same things, and we have a large range of skills. We are complementary. PP: As Stéphane said, we like different things. He is more interested in digital installations, and I, more in everything connected to printed matter. Right now we are trying to connect both. I am very interested in the music field, so I try to adapt some of his installations for the sound part. This multidisciplinarity can be a real asset but also a big constraint. In France there is a big classification problem : people want to work with you because you own a speciality in publishing, brand identity or digital. However, if you do a range of different things… it is quickly less simple to find projects and convince clients. We have the strong feeling that clients are looking for specialised agencies. But we try to do our best to keep this transversality. SB: As designers, when it comes to technical projects, we think that it is important to put your shoulder to the wheel to understand the project mechanisms. We believe that we can handle these technical issues by ourselves, and, if we can't, we ask someone from outside while managing the design part. We like to think with a global and traversal approach even if we need to reconsider the client's request. Generally they are somewhat reluctant at the beginning, but then they are quickly and pleasantly surprised. Thanks to our candour, we build a relationship of trust with our clients. We become consultants. For example, we have recently been asked to make the art direction of a magazine. Topics were interesting, but they didn't have a huge budget, because it was a personal project. PP: If we made the brand identity, the website and the magazine, we were totally over budget. This is why we analysed the situation and chose to make a very straight brand identity in a short time, for a lower cost. They were pretty surprised when we made this proposal, but for us it seemed normal to help them to choose the best option.

We noticed that your work plays a lot with the use of light. Do you consider it as a real medium ? SB: You are the first to notice that, it is true that we try to adapt our ideas to a large range of supports and media… and in particular the question of light. For me it is above all the concept of putting pixels out of the screen, to make a virtual and tangible project at the same time. PP: The question of light has always been for me a key element. During my post-graduate year at the ENSAD, I started researches about capturing typography through a photographic enlarger. This question has always been important for me. Type design is closely linked to this notion : it is the understanding of light and shape. The balance we have to find in type design, it is the balance between shape and white. We don't learn to draw full shapes, but to draw the blank space, the light, influencing the shape. We work also with light in the original sense of the term, for projections or installations, like for example the stage device we made for the musician Chamberlain, where a structure filled with smoke injected volume to video projections. The fog materialised the projected light by giving it a physical volume, almost tangible. Interview conducted in February 2016 ©ktlg