Hélène Marian

Talk

Now26 ✚

[ Talk description to be announced ]

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Biography

Interview ✚ [ to be announced ]

Hélène Marian, with a degree in Illustration and Type Design from École Estienne, Paris, transitioned into type design after several years working as a typographer with Michael Levin at Doc Levin Studio. Together, they designed museum identities for MahJ, exhibition signages for the BnF, Shoah Memorial, and Cité de la Musique, and catalogs and programmes for the Musée National de la Renaissance.

As independent, she practices now a dual design combining typographic rigor with unbridled gesturality. Adept of spectacular in situ interventions, she has been seen in Brittany painting words on boats ready to set sail, in the window of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Pau, setting up an orgy of undulating letters under pink neon lights, and punctuating the grand parade of the 93 with countless painted lettering signs. Her award-winning PVC typeface family, a polymorphous and manifesto-like project, is published by the French foundry Production Type, with which she also teamed up to create custom typefaces for the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). NaN Archy, her last project published by the Berlin-based Foundry NaN reveals design steps as a feature, a mise en abyme of the type design process.

She has also taught for several years in the international postgraduate typography programme Esad Type, and the workshops she gives in Europe, such as at Écal, HfG, La Cambre, etc. are a part of her practice.

Since 2015, she has been actively collaborating with the French experimental music scene by creating numerous letterings and visuals for labels, musicians and magazines.

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