Des Signes

What is the story of your studio ? FD: Elise and I founded the studio together. We met at the ENSAD in Paris when we were students. We have already worked a lot together taking part in some contests at school. Elise began working with Jean Widmer, and I with Philippe Apeloig. They were both part of our teachers at the ENSAD. A few years after we left school, we set up our studio between 2002 and 2003. Since then, we started to have clients, rather cultural institutions such as the National Library of France and Museums of France. It was only the two of us at the beginning, in a tiny studio. We got bigger gradually. EM: A major event has allowed us to expand, when we won the contest of the graphic charter of the Palace of Versailles. We thought it was time to be a little more numerous. Since, we have stabilized to a dozen people, including interns. We have been in this studio for eight years. We are two partners, besides Clara who handles communication and copywriting. Otherwise, we are all designers. Then, we are surrounded with several other trades: designers, developers, typographers, calligraphers… We have the will to do most of our work here in the studio, receiving people we work with.

As a graphic designer, do you consider that it is necessary to have a specialty today ? FD: It's a real question we ask ourselves. We are not specialized in a field or in a particular type of media. It may sound negative, but on the contrary, this can lead to many fields, and this is thanks to it that we have a lot of work. However, we can say we have a specialty: the culture or the cultural institutions. This is very interesting because many of our customers come to find us for that, it's what makes our strength. We developed a relationship based on mutual trust with our customers over time, and we can now afford to do things in our own way. This kind of expertise allows us to go further in what we propose to the client, but also in our experiments. We still have the desire to experiment in other areas to see how we could apply our method of work elsewhere. At the moment, we try to work in the field of performing arts, as conservatories of music and dance of Lyon and the French National Academy of Dramatic Arts of Paris for example.

Do you have a particular work ethics ? FD: We want everyone to feel comfortable. Elise and I direct creation, everything goes largely through us, but we remain attentive to all the people of the studio. We try to let everyone bring its sensitivity while respecting our style. On our website we keep a record of all those who have worked in our studio. We all work together. This exchange is very rich for all of us. Working in pairs may seem simpler because it is true that coordinating a team is not an easy work, but working like that allows us to enhance projects, to go further, to have more freedom.

Do you have the desire to teach in parallel with your job ? FD: I taught in a school for half a year. Otherwise we did some workshops. Teaching is something very interesting but we don't have enough time to organize ourselves. It is also a real work of patience with each student. If there are sixty students, there are sixty issues, sixty different ways of seeing the project. EM: We run after time. We have permanently around twenty ongoing projects, not to mention our personal ones. Clara is teaching in an artistic preparatory class twice a week. But this is not something we exclude, quite the contrary. FD: Well that's part of the important things to us. I think every experience is different according to each graphic designer and each studio, and being able to bring it to the students can be very enriching. Interview conducted in April 2015 ©ktlg