27/10/2011
«Beatrice Warde lecture», par Simon Esterson
Tuesday night: to Bridewell Hall at the St Bride Library for the annual Beatrice Warde lecture, this year given by Sébastien Morlighem on ‘Researching Excoffon and the Fonderie Olive: Type as document.’
It’s Roger Excoffon’s centenary year and Morlighem is on a campaign to restore Excoffon to his rightful place in the history of graphic design. It seems that even in his own country, the man responsible for the Air France logo and that most popular French display font Mistral has fallen from favour, while fonts such as Antique Olive, Banco and Calypso have always had a Gallic air that didn’t play too well among the grid-obsessed designers of 1960s Europe.
But maybe Excoffon’s time has come … certainly two of the world’s leading type designers sitting in last night’s audience seemed to be paying close attention.
Morlighem’s gripping story was one of discovering archives and liberating original drawings from dusty boxes. Along the way, he’s unravelled the relationship between Excoffon and the Marseille-based foundry of Marcel Olive that in the postwar period challenged the dominance of the great Parisian foundry of Deberny & Peignot with fonts such as Excoffon’s Nord and Vendome, Olive’s answer to Garamond, designed by François Ganeau under the guiding eye of Excoffon.