“Caractère Noël”, 1951-1964: The Manufacture of Typographic Discourse in France

Résumé En

Taking as a starting point the special issues of the magazine Caractère Noël (1951-1964) and Maximilien Vox’s dual role as editor-in-chief and artistic director, this work is based on the study of various editorial corpuses and archive collections. It aims to analyze the establishment of a space for public discussion around graphic design and the influence in the development of typographic culture in France.Exploring this corpus and studying the uniqueness of this publication reveals a series of questions that run through the practice of graphic design at the time.The editorial policy echoes the debates that animated the profession and illustrates the positioning of certain designers and typographers around the Graphie Latine movement. This aspect would have an important impact on the development of French graphic culture in the decades to come.The magazine also bears witness to the profound transformations that would affect the field of graphic design. The spread of offset printing, the decline of metal letterpress composition and the arrival of photo-composition modified all stages of graphic production.The aim of the research is to explore the editorial form, questioning the production, distribution and development of the rhetoric that was carried by the magazine Caractère Noël. This work thus draws on issues raised by design theorists and researchers who have examined these aspects from a historical perspective.Nevertheless, it is through graphic design that the project aims to explore the close links between publishing, discourse production, and graphic design practice. This approach seeks to empower the graphic designer as a creator of digital research tools to be used in a common knowledge sharing project.