Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics

Contributed by Production Type on Aug 9th, 2024. Artwork published in

circa 1988

Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics 1 — License: All Rights Reserved.

If you watched the epic opening ceremony to the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, you might have seen the typeface featured in this post. Just before hoisting the Olympic flag upside down, you could have spotted the inscriptions on Palais de Chaillot, made from golden letters displaying A.M. Cassandre’s famous typeface Peignot. The Palais was built for the 1937 World Exhibition and Peignot was introduced with much fanfare on that occasion.

Another occasion for much fanfare were the XVI. Olympic Winter Games in 1992 that were hosted by Albertville, a town of just under 20,000 inhabitants in the French alpine region of Savoie. The visual identity for those games combined an Olympic flame in the heraldic colors of Savoie, French stripes bleu-blanc-rouge, the Olympic rings, and the name of Albertville set in a wordmark based on Peignot.

The flame logo was initially invented by Bruno Quentin, member of the Agence technique of the Savoie department. Later Paris-based design agency Desgrippes Beauchant Gobé Cato was commissioned with developing the overall identity. There, the pictorial logo was carefully redrawn under the art direction of Alain Doré, while Pierre Katz was responsible for drawing the Albertville wordmark based on Peignot. In comparison to the original version from 1937, Katz cut off the horizontal strokes diagonally and sliced open the counters of A and B – which makes them behave more like the R. Katz’s drawing of the figure 9 appears more stabilized than the original. The design guide for the Olympic games of Albertville is a treasure trove for everyone interested in the history of graphic design. And we sure all would want these sweaters and jackets today.

In 2023, Production Type from Paris acquired the rights to freshly digitize, extend and distribute all typefaces of the estate of A.M. Cassandre. This includes Peignot that is already available in Production Type’s Beta Program but still awaits release in the general catalog.

The Albertville 92 wordmark (bottom) as shown in the style guide, compared to the original Peignot demi as shown in a 1937 specimen by Deberny & Peignot. The overall weight was increased a little. Apexes in A and V were made blunt, like in Peignot gras. The counters in A and B were opened up, probably to echo the R. All horizontals were cut off diagonally. The numeral 9 got a more balanced bowl, and the 2 was made narrower.

Just a small sample from the huge assortment of pins by Collection Olympique – including versions of the logo in monochrome red and with a golden contour