Plasticocène is an exhibition and an event organized by Polymer at la Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille, France. It presents contemporary works whose creative processes are part of a reaction and awareness of the pollution of the entire water cycle by plastic waste. The exhibition brings together artists who use plastic waste as a raw material. Plastic is recycled, melted, sculpted and generates a cycle of transformation. Invited artists and collectives: Wendy Andreu, Côme Di Meglio, Marion Flament, Coline Le Quenven, Thomas Mailaender, James Shaw, Elvia Teotski, Maxime Verret, Ateliers Laissez Passer, Gangui Collectif, IGO Studio, Museo Aero Solar, NSDOS, Southway Studio.

Polymer invited Large to design the visual identity of the event, for which they produced a series of key visuals playing on a magnified representation of nature and a feeling of urgency with a striking red. For the identity, the French studio used Insitu Bold and Bold Italic.

Booklet designed by Large using Packer from MA-MA Type.

From Large’s website:

The Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) is an institution supporting artistic creation in France in all areas of the visual arts: painting, performance art, sculpture, photography, installation art, video, multimedia, graphic design, etc. We did the design and layout for the booklet presenting its activities in 2013 as well as a custom version of its logotype to reflect our singular editorial concept.

Grand Cuisine is a creative consultancy based in Paris working with brands to produce campaigns, commercials, identities and events. Large designed the agency’s visual identity and website using Malamocco Regular.

Each year, the 23 French regional contemporary art funds (FRAC) organize a one weekend event to promote their action and engage their public. For the 2017 edition, Large created a set of communication tools with a map-based mini site where the public could easily reach the FRACs and download the event program. The studio also produced 3 promotional videos explaining the idea behind FRACs through key numbers, reviews and quotes.

Insitu, soon to be published on Formagari, was largely developed on this occasion. The slab serif is Memphis.

Cover of Design is capital. Lille Métropole 2020 World Design Capital.

“Design is capital” is the slogan of Lille Métropole, France, as World Design Capital 2020. Founded in 1957 by Jacques Viénot, the World Design Organization represents industrial designers' interests and contributes to the definition of industrial norms and to projects aimes at improving living conditions. Every two years a different city is elected World Design Capital, based on its innovative use of design for social, environmental or economical development. The title of World Design Capital will then lead to different regional actions: in 2020, Lille launched a call for proofs of concept, direct action projects proofed by large scale experiments, related to different themes: public action, circular economy, living, mobility, care, and the collaborative city.

The catalog Design is capital is a restitution of these actions as much as an exploration of Lille’s background as a city rooted in design issues. The graphic designers of Large worked on an object that would show the simplicity and evidence of a well-designed object, something that doesn't have to be deciphered to be understood immediately. The use of blue, white and red is a reference to the French flag, anchoring the city of Lille in a national territory. At the same time it’s a deliberate return to primary colors that are at the basis of the color spectrum. This association offers great legibility and is used in the book as indicator for the different sections, made visible directly on the fore-edge.

Large chose to work with Enduro, designed by their own Emmanuel Besse and made available from Production Type. It’s paired with Untitled Serif from Klim Type Foundry. The flexibility of Enduro parallels the idea of design as a tool that adapts to the user’s needs, and is used to set titles and introductory texts. Here, the grotesque style evokes something of a modernist approach to direct information while at the same time having small details reminding of technical sheets for industrial objects, with sometimes clumsy letters (the only clue of that being in the wide eye of the a). On the other hand, legends and longer texts are set in Untitled Serif, contrasting with Enduro and clarifying the hierarchies and textual natures of the catalog. The design of the book could therefore be seen as a direct illustration of the psychological concept of affordance as theorized by James J. Gibson, which qualifies the capacity of an object to suggest its use on its own.

In 2020, Large was commissioned with the new visual identity for the Citadium department stores, part of the French Printemps chain. Citadium offers medium to high-end clothing and is aimed at a young audience, who likes to wear trendy clothes and sportswear.

Taking this target into account, Large created an identity filled with pop references, using different symbols, pictograms, logotypes as a graphic vocabulary arranged into a digital patchwork. This reference to how images are stored, released, copied and pasted in our digital era leads up into a playful identity, where symbols are diverted from their initial meaning, creating a new kind of syntax (this is very much visible on Citadium’s Instagram account and on their website). In terms of typography, Signal from Production Type is linked to this explosion of codes, and is used for the logotype and as the primary brand typeface, exclusively in all caps. Citadium employs a wide palette of secondary fonts, several of which are sourced from the library of system fonts.

Signal’s design is based on the French highway signage typeface, and is therefore anchored in the public space, as a kind of contemporary epigraphy. What better counter balance to the diversity of digital culture assumed in the identity, for a store claiming an urban style? While the font matches conceptually, it’s also coherent to bring back legibility and a simplicity that comes along with the evidence of fashion. In the end, Large succeeds in creating an identity that is the reflection of the youth of the time.

Signal in combination with Kaffi, an angular italic by Yin Fei Gwee which is among the recurring secondary typefaces.

Xmas 2020 graphics. Photography by Charlotte Navio, art direction by Virna Hagen & Hynd Mezaguer.

Since 2020, Large is in charge of the visual identity of La Gaîté Lyrique, a cultural institution in the heart of Paris devoted to digital and media culture. For the Paris Podcast Festival, La Gaîté Lyrique launched a series of podcasts entitled Il était des voix (“Once upon a voice”). The editorial direction is focused on making voices heard that are usually silenced in public space, such as those of disabled and mentally ill persons, or of persons with accents considered marginal to the French language.

The special identity created for this podcast series uses the latest release of Production Type, Enduro, designed by a member of Large, Emmanuel Besse. The identity exists solely in digital form and is aimed mostly at social networks. The straightforward design of Enduro and its use in the Condensed version give stability to the title of the podcast and succeed to evoke a space for the unheard through the thickness of its shapes. The association with pulsating colored circles reminds us of sound waves and gives life to the voices even when there’s no sound added to the visuals. Furthermore, this simple graphic design keeps an abstraction that’s welcome for representing a non-visual medium while being visually impactful and evocative.

Enduro is paired with Dinamo’s ABC Marfa, which is the typeface used for the standard identity of La Gaîté Lyrique.

Homepage.

La Gaîté Lyrique is a cultural venue by the City of Paris. Opened in 2010, it is dedicated to highlighting post-Internet culture. Artistic practices that originate online are exhibited here, but also are imagined, produced, experienced and transmitted. Gaîté Lyrique aims to be a space of discovery, for understanding our virtualized era. It is also a place of celebration, creativity and sharing.

The new visual identity was developed by Large, with a logo designed by Yorgo&Co. The website was made by Matter of Fact. ABC Marfa, an upcoming sans serif by Dinamo, is used throughout, in several weights.

Logo variant referencing captchas, self-description with inline images.

About page.

Article teasers. On hover, the whole text gets italicized, see center column.

Event detail.

Event detail.

Menu.

Sacro Bosco is the debut EP of French electronic musical artist Christophe Le Gall alias Too Smooth Christ, released in 2015 on cantina.cool. For the album art and the dedicated website, Alaric Garnier designed a lockup using an early version of his typeface Kessler, featuring nested and ligated letters.

The typeface is also used in the purely typographic music video for “Ninfeo”, the second track on Sacro Bosco. Since March 2019, Kessler is available for licensing from Production Type. The OO ligature as well as the SA pair with the top-heavy S are included (in slightly different form) in the final version of the font, and can be accessed via discretionary ligatures.

The source code of the website included an ASCII version of Kessler’s letterforms.

For more than 20 years, Trax magazine has dived into the electronic music ocean, carefully curating, analyzing and reviewing all things related to the genre.

To commemorate this milestone, the Trax team gave birth to a huge retrospective book, looking at the past two decades. More than just a collection of archives from the magazine, the book is full of all-new material.

Starting with a foreword by Jack Lang, past France’s Minister of Culture and originator of the Fête de la Musique and the Techno Parade, the book chronicles 20 years of local electronic scenes from all over the world, 20 years of parties, from major ones to underground ones, 20 years of DJs and faces who made this music, 20 years of technological innovations regarding the tools and hardwares used to produce electronic sounds, and many more, including a list of 300 essential records.

The art direction of the book has been given to French studio Large, already in charge of the magazine look. Large chose to stay consistent with the magazine design while bringing some new features to make the book self-sufficient. That’s why the main text is set with Spectral, an open-source typeface designed by Production Type and released on Google Fonts, while titles and quotes are set with Stratos, already used in the mag.

Éditions Hachette / 320 pages / 23,3 × 28,4 cm

On the cover, the title is printed in silver foil.

From Large website:

ISELP (Superior institute for the study of plastic language, Brussels, BE) is a space dedicated to contemporary art founded in 1971. We did the design for its program (September–December 2016) presenting the lectures, interventions and exhibitions taking place at the institute.

Trax is France’s leading magazine and website for electronic music and culture. Founded in Paris in 1997, Trax was historically intermingled with its subject (from the early days of the “French Touch” to later major acts), witnessing, recording, and surviving the dramatic changes of the music industry and the rise of electronic culture. In 2013, the magazine was eventually bought by its own employees. Trax turned 18 in 2015 and decided to reflect these changes with a new format.

Production Type’s Jean-Baptiste Levée, in collaboration with Large design studio, rethought the new Trax from the ground up. Starting from a new magazine format and art direction, and a new logo drawn by Levée (based on Stunt Nord, a standalone style of the Stunt family, to be released), the overhaul extended beyond the magazine to all aspects of the Trax brand, such as the website, events, and digital products.

The type palette provided by Production Type is a compound of existing off-the-shelf types, new extensions, and previously unseen designs. The main text typeface is Cardinal, a serifed alphabet drawn by Yoann Minet & Quentin Schmerber under Levée’s guidance. Cardinal refers to many classic Jannon-inspired typefaces that were popular in 1990s digital culture, and distantly echoes the ill-fated typeface ITC Garamond. In this way, Cardinal Photo and Cardinal Fruit are two extra sidekicks, reminiscent of an era where the early photocomposition faces were swapped with their electronic counterparts. Stratos, Minet’s own design, while being unreleased at the time, was featured in the layout since the first issue redesigned by the team. Minotaur Lombardic & Proto Slab debuted on the cover of Trax magazine (respectively on issues 185 & 190), too. Existing designs from the Production Type catalog were also put to use across all Trax channels: Minotaur, Minotaur Sans, Minotaur Beef, Countach, and Proto Grotesk, which gained newly drawn weights specifically for the brand.

Read more about the project on It’s Nice That and see more pictures on Large website.

Large:

The FILAF (Festival International du Livre d’Art et du Film) wishes to bring together, celebrate and award the best books and films on the subject of art produced during the year around the globe.

For the 2014 edition, we were responsible for the editorial design of the third issue of FILAF Annual, the annual journal published by the festival. We also designed the poster for the event.

Poster