Paris is known for many things—the city of lights, the city of romance—but design is not likely to be at the top of the list. When the subject of French design comes up in conversation, most Americans would be hard pressed to think of a designer other than cross-disciplinary visionary Philippe Starck, the larger-than-life Parisian. He’s the design world equivalent of a rock star, primarily known for his design of hotels including New York City’s Royalton and Paramount, sleek modern furniture (his Louis Ghost chair is a stunning polycarbonate homage to Louis XV style), and range of clever, iconic industrial design products. There is also Jean-Paul Goude, whose career has encompassed art direction at Esquire and fashion photography to music videos that immortalized Grace Jones as an Amazon-like disco goddess.

FRENCH DESIGN PRIMER
Historically, the French are known for fine art—a virtual who’s who of the world’s most beautiful paintings and sculpture from David and Delacroix to Picasso and Rodin—not for graphic design, even though poster design as social commentary does have a long tradition in France, as in other parts of Europe.

Design history buffs might find me negligent if I overlooked the impact and contributions of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864- 1901) and A.M. Cassandre (1901-1968) when setting the stage for a contemporary practitioner like Sandrine Pagnoux. Toulouse-Lautrec, while primarily known as a painter, he was also an Art Nouveau-era illustrator and lithographer who happily recorded the bohemian life of Paris at the end of the 19th century—before it killed him—including illustrations for humor magazine, Le Rire. Cassandre, who migrated from Russia at age 14, was successful enough with his early poster work that he was able to start his own advertising agency, Alliance Graphique Internationale. He worked with diverse clients during the 1930s, including Dubonnet. We may be able to blame him in part for the advent of the billboard: The posters he created for Dubonnet were among the first specifically designed to catch a motorist’s attention. The poster of the ship Normandie is Cassandre’s most famous design from that era. He is also responsible for the ubiquitous, iconic Yves Saint-Laurent logo (1963) that still denotes class with a capital C.

FRENCH DESIGN ARRIVES
Today posters advertising stores, films, and theater and dance performances decorate the metro system and kiosks throughout Paris. But the truth is that the French are simply not as obsessed with the topic of design as their American counterparts.

Modern French graphic design began to flourish after the 1968 riots. Most notably with the advent of the design collective Grapus (1970–1990), originally formed by Pierre Bernard, Gérard Paris- Clavel, and Francois Miehe (and later joined by Jean-Paul Bachollet and Alex Jordan). Atelier de Création Graphique, founded by Bernard, and Paris-Clavel’s Les Graphistes Associés continued to advance their design ideals and inspire students. For Bernard and Paris-Clavel, who studied with famed Polish poster designer Henryk Tomaszewski, design must function as a public service, a strong distinction between how design is viewed in France—in part because of its strong tradition of poster design—and the U.S., where design most often needs to sell something. The Atelier has designed the graphic identity of the Louvre Museum, the visual identity of the French National Parks and Job-Scheufelen papers, and signage for the Centre Pompidou, among others. “I believed that graphic communication could be an instrument of social change when applied to cultural institutions,” Bernard has said.

“I never think about [the] public,” Bernard told me in a 1993 interview in San Francisco (he had come as part of the San Francisco AIGA design lecture series that year, along with Goude). “And here all the designers are thinking about their public. For me design is for all public—it is not for gods, it is for human beings. That’s all.”

While the world’s attention has been directed to various countries and their exported design style trends over the last several decades—think Switzerland or the Netherlands—relatively little design news has emerged from France. But that could be changing. When not distracted by the shocking amount of graffiti defacing landmark buildings throughout Paris, one can see many examples of modern, elegant, and fresh design for a variety of products and cultural events on kiosks and billboards.

“At last, the French design scene is booming,” says Paris-born Erik Adigard, cofounder of the interdisciplinary design firm M-A-D, in Sausalito, Calif. Adigard has produced editorial, interface, and concept designs for Wired and Microsoft and counts the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design among his achievements.

“I participated in the Chaumont Festival last year and was blown away by the intensity and breadth of design,” Adigard relates. The festival began 17 years ago when design critic Alain Weill took steps to establish a home for French poster design, hoping to put France on the international design map (like other festival sites in Brno, Czech Republic, and Lahti, Finland). “As a whole, the event was more momentous, fresh, and engaged than any typical AIGA poster exhibit. This phenomenon is mostly noticeable as expressionist print design, in the same way that web design stood out from other disciplines in the ’90s design scene of Scandinavia.”

EXPLOSIVE DESIGN
“Each page must explode whether by its deep and heavyweight gravity, by its dizziness, its novelty, its eternity, its crushing joke, the enthusiasm of its principles, or the way it is printed,” stated poet and essayist Tristan Tzara in 1918, speaking of the graphics revolution fomented by the Dada movement, of which he was a founder.

Tzara’s quote perfectly describes the impact of Sandrine Pagnoux’s layered designs. Part of the latest wave of French design, she marries traditional forms with her interest in the world of technology. Using photographs as her starting point, she adds layer upon layer of calligraphy, color, and illustration until the piece explodes with meaning and impact. Her work at times approximates a wall of aged graffiti, evidence of the culture swirling around her. Perhaps in part, this is her homage to the Paris-based artist known as Miss Tic, whose social commentary—what she calls pochoirs des rues—has been stenciled on walls throughout Paris since 1985.