Pierre Jeanneret

“The choice of typography to convey a brand image and get a message across is crucial. You need to take the time to analyze your customer's requirements in depth, to know who you're addressing, what tone of voice you're using and what medium you're using. It's also important to consider the world in which you're going to evolve, and the logical choice of other players in the field, because today, with the repetition of visual messages, people instinctively identify a given font with a given industry, or a given use. Here, restriction liberates: the more constraints you put on yourself (I have to speak to such and such a target, through such and such a medium, etc.), the more likely you are to do so adequately and harmoniously. In fact, you can't go wrong with typography. It's not a matter of “like/dislike”. There are codes and associations you can't transgress, otherwise you'll miss your target and confuse your message. Nothing is done at random, as in the use of the color orange to define services that are accessible to all (e.g. EasyJet, or Coop and Migros).

When it comes to typographic choices, restriction is liberating: the more constraints you put on yourself, the more likely you are to get the right result.

In practice, you won't choose the same typography if the message is intended to appear in text or as a title, or if it is meant to be displayed on a large or small surface. For example, in the redesign of the CNCI's magazine Repères, it was necessary to find a font that was ultra-readable, serious, while remaining modern and dynamic. Gotham naturally imposed itself due to its style and timeless nature.

If I had to summarize the use of typography, I would quote this phrase from Massimo Vignelli (a famous Italian designer to whom American Airlines or the New York Subway, among others, owe their choice of font): 'A good typographer has a sensitivity to the distance between letters, it is this space that is most important, in a sense it is like music, it is not the notes that matter but the separation that we put between them.'