groupe CCC

What is the story of groupe CCC ? VB: We met at school, then after graduating, we decided to set up our studio. Back then, we started to work remotely, through internet, during two years, Alice being an intern in London and me in Paris. This situation led us to define a specific work protocol so that it could work. It was the first thing that we said to each other, it is great to work together, but how do we do to both work on the files… we used then a lot of services. AG: It really shaped our way of working together in the same office. All of our files are commutable. They go back and forth between our both hands and both computers. We founded a research project around that idea. We had the luck to get a grant from the National Foundation of Graphic and Plastic Arts. This project put forward the creation of tools suited to fluidify the switch between softwares. We are going to work with a developer to make those tools more flexible and why not create some specific to our practice within the studio. All this is strictly inherited from our way of working. VB: When we started to professionalize, there was this first issue: how to work simultaneously on a same poster. It can’t be done with Dropbox. Thus, we set up a quite simple system which consisted of copying the files with our initial at the beginning. So typically in this research project, this will be one of the points that will particularly be addressed. AG: Another point will be to ask why should books only be done with Indesign. Lately, we designed a book completely with a script. This book had so much data that we worked on it with our developer, and it is a script that had everything organized. We want to challenge the status of creation tools, we think that it does not matter how it's done, we try to shake things up a bit. What would happen if we denormalized this ?

How do you handle those convictions in your projects, which can sometimes be precise commands ? AG: We consider all our projects as a whole, in the idea. However in practice, some projects do not bring research at all. But this exploratory project exists because by answering some commands we were limited by our tools at one time. But we still manage to make sense of things. When working with a publishing house, which produces printed books, we will not propose them a digital book. Most often customers arrive with a clear idea. We then try to work on rather different projects. VB: For an order there is necessarily a finality. However when we worked with the artist Ève Chabanon, who wanted a website to present her productions, we designed her website so that it generates itself a publication, because it is related to her work. AG: She does performance. Her work also illustrates itself through these performances, as well as in the research she does around it and in the reports she makes of. She writes a lot about her art and is interested in the field of publishing and in the issue of books. The answer we found is a website where events appear, such as small business cards associated with a performance that can be linked to an image used during the performance. Behind every event, one can find all her research, documentation... and it generates a PDF based on the selected subject. We can then make a selection within the documentation, keeping only the theoretical content or on the contrary only iconography. Through the creation of sites, we try to generate tools so that they are not only showcases. That remains their first base, but for us, it can also be a work tool for Internet users, the site becomes a useful object whether it is to sort records, to generate a book...

You worked on several projects with Jean Boîte Éditions, can you tell us a bit more about this collaboration ? VB: At first, we only had to make a book in collaboration with them, Florence likes. It has not been finalized yet for various reasons. This is a rather complex book, we'll resume this project soon. Meanwhile, since they were pleased with the preparatory work done on Florence likes, they asked us to work on other books. AG: It is really interesting to collaborate with them because their contents are rather highly-specialized, it brings us to also give the sharpest shape to our work, but with their contradiction to be mass appealing. It is a long-term work we maintain with them. I do not limit this collaboration to the creation of books independents to each other, the idea is to consider the evolution from book to book. With some clients for whom we work regularly, each project has a finality in itself. Jean Boîte is different. VB: With Jean Boîte Éditions, command changes completely depending on the book. There are books for which there is more freedom than others, depending on the subject, the type of book or based on the publisher’s approach of the subject. I think of the book #artselfie. The command was to have a very institutional book, hence this typographic choice, this very clean layout in the end...

What differences do you notice now in the way you work by comparing to your debut ? VB: Everything has evolved. We do not have the same projects, not the same pace, not the same rhythm or the same economy. When we started, there were far fewer projects, we had far more time to carry them out. Today we are lucky to have many projects in rather varied fields. I think as we work, we continue to grow and develop our practice. This is something that will always remain important to us. We have always said that the day we begin to lock ourselves in a systematism relative to work, it will be time to ask ourselves some questions. Interview conducted in November 2015 ©ktlg