Roger Excoffon: type & graphic designer, painter, philosopher (video)

At last Bruce Kennett's ode to type designer, painter & philosopher Roger Excoffon is available online for all to learn more about this genius of design.

Excoffon’s work is a central part of the personality of post-WWII France — the three decades that the French call les trente glorieuses. Perhaps best known for his display types, such as Mistral and Banco, Excoffon spent many years as art director of Marseille’s Fonderie Olive. In the 1950s and ’60s, his work rapidly found its way into the very fabric of everyday life, visible in the tiniest villages of rural France on the awnings of beauty parlors and exterior signs of garages. 

Beyond his printing types, Excoffon also expressed the fundamental spirit of the times through his posters for Air France, his work in advertising, and his graphic design program for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. He was a prime mover in les Rencontres de Lure, France's equivalent of the Aspen Design Conference. Bruce Kennett, author of W. A Dwiggins: A Life in Design and a previous Lubalin lecturer, returns to take us on a tour of Excoffon's joyful and passionate work.

The talk took place in the Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union on October 16, 2019, as part of Type@Cooper's Lubalin Lecture Series. This and all recordings of the Lecture series are made possible through the generosity of Hoefler & Co.