Legibility's Genesis
by Diorama Type Partners
Legibility is the very first object we designed for the Diorama project and the foundation of how we operate as a magazine publisher. Legibility was originally born from Fernand Bonin’s quote: “One must admit: Whatever the taste that one has for legibility, clearness and transparency. It isn't always sufficient, and not always for everyone. The eye isn't only nourished by legibility but by all of the letter's beauty. It could not be clearer.” (Communication et langages, 1977). It is from this idea of “eye candy” that new conversations questioning the decorative aspect of art emerged.
We started this revue with a principle of correspondences. First, a thought, a quote — composed graphically — is sent by post to potential contributors from various fields who are then invited to respond to it their own way. Shifting between different fields such as graphic design, art, literature, or photography, the purpose of the revue is to confront all these points of view and to seal them under one graphical object: the magazine.
In 2015, Marie-Mam Sai Bellier, Guillaume Sbalchiero and Clara Pasteau designed the huge envelope and poster that would be used for the contribution call. The size of the envelope made way for the choice of a large format magazine (26x36cm) to illustrate the notion of excess and the idea of “feeding the eye” mentioned by Fernand Baudin. It is also ideal to appreciate typefaces in a wider scale.
It was also at that time that the idea emerged for us to follow the footsteps of 1970’s international type specimen newsprints and type foundries journals and so our editorial team gave shape to the very heteroclite content of a variety of guests.
Following this 1970’s heritage, we decided that the printed versions of Revue Diorama would be empirically changing for each issue: one theme, one open call, laid out contributions in light of a given quote, new contributors, new typefaces, one specific format of publication (new format, papers and material), each special to one issue only.
After three years in the making, we were proud to present the first issue of our magazine Revue Diorama, with generous and dazzling contributions by: Paul Andali, Manon Bachelier, Claire Barrault, Marika Belle, Laurence Bellier Victoria Bellier, David Bennewith, Jonas Berthod, Fred Birdsall, Louise Boiron, Hugo Boutry, Louis Brousseau, Bureau Brut, Marion Cachon, Bruno Carbonnet, Maxime Castagnac, Léo Castel, Benoît Clément, Alain Couraud Matthieu Cortat, Alexis Cros, Sebastian Davila, Eliott Déchamboux, Valentin Defaux, Guy Demaysoncel, Jordan Derrien, Dio, Dinamo Typefoundry, Floris Dutoit, Clément Faydit, Diane Gaignoux, Alaric Garnier, Clément Gicquel Nicholas Goudket, Quentin Goujout, Annija Grīsle, Eliott Grunewald, Léa Guintrand, Amaury Hamon, Julien Humbert, intercouleur, Camille Jacoby, Valentin Kaiser, Ministère Des Petites Choses (Noémie Lacroix), La Direction (Elsa Audouin et Aurélien Arnaud), James Langdon, Hugo Laporte, Thomas Le Provost, Olivier Lebrun, Steven Lenoir, Simon Lextrait, Roxanne Maillet, Meatwreck (Mitra Saboury and Derek Paul Boyle), John Morgan, Jules Moskovtchenko, Marcel Mrejen, Motoki Nakatani, Alain Papazian, Clara Pasteau, Axel Pelletanche Thévenart, Simon Penard, Thomas Petit, Camille Pogu, Auriane Preud’homme, Audrey Quaranta, Quentin Rebierre-Roux, Alice Savoie, Victorien Soufflet, Marine Stephan, They Are Here, Adrien Vasquez, Rozenn Voyer, Felix Weigand.
This project was made possible with the support of ENSBA Lyon, generously offering the first 20 prints in June 2017 for our diploma and the Kickstarter in 2018 to pre-order the first issue. It was launched at Studio H13 in 2018.
