Cover of the exhibition journal, French language, 24 pages.

From 9 October 2019 to 27 January 2020, the Grand Palais in Paris showed a huge exhibition of works by French painter Toulouse-Lautrec. It was the first major retrospective in the artist’s home country in decades. The show was accompanied by a number of publications, including an illustrated exhibition journal, a bilingual paperback edition with reproductions of all featured images, and a full-featured hardback catalog edited by Stéphane Guégan.

The display typeface used for all these publications is Zangezi. Started in 2018, Daria Cohen’s in-progress design is inspired by Salem, a metal typeface first cast by the Keystone foundry in 1901 – the year of Toulouse-Lautrec’s death. It’s used for headings and quotes, occasionally featuring its italics, too. Zangezi is also used for the exhibition logo that shows the artist’s double name in two stacked lines. The initial letters here touch each other, with unilaterally clipped serifs.

Zangezi is paired with Stanley for text. With its sharp details, Ludovic Balland’s reimagination of Times New Roman is a good fit for the eccentric Zangezi. Captions are set in Aidos. The “semi-proportional typewriter” face by Alexander Rütten nicely blends into the mix, echoing Zangezi’s “Latin” wedge-shaped serifs.

Spread from the exhibition journal with Danièle Devynck’s text about Lautrec and women.

Cover of the exhibition catalog, French language, 352 pages. Zangezi Italic is used for the quote by Thadée Natanson on the banderole.

Title page of the exhibition catalog.

Opening spread for Stéphane Guégan’s biography.

Chronology of Lautrec’s life, set in Stanley Regular and Italic, featuring its oldstyle numerals.

Spread from the catalog, with Zangezi for the quote and Aidos for the source and the image captions.

Tote bag showing the logo in Zangezi with modified serifs for the capital letters.