Technical and technological developments accompany creations, facilitate their implementation, shape them, and some - times format them. Graphic designers have always maintained a close relationship with their tools. This is the subject we chose to address in the 2012 issue of Graphisme en France. Code was beginning to infiltrate the design process at the time, and seemed to embody a promising new development. Ten years later, over the course of which the question of the tools and possibilities offered by digital technology has continued to grow. Mediums, applications, and websites have multiplied, and research has developed. The omnipresence of digital technology in our surroundings has encouraged critical thinking, and has led to other models.
To this end, we have invited Julie Blanc, Nolwenn Maudet, and Anne-Lyse Renon, graphic designers and researchers, and Joost Grootens, designer and researcher, to share the fruit of their reflections and their current ongoing work. Their contributions highlight the richness and vivacity of their thinking, and the inventiveness of the projects of the designers they convoke.
The graphic design of this issue was entrusted to studio F451, co-founded by Quentin Creuzet, a 2018 graduate of Estienne, and Domitille Debret, a 2017 graduate of the Ensaama Olivier-de-Serres, and a 2019 graduate of the Eindhoven Design Academy. We thank them for this issue that they designed by questioning the use of different tools, pushing the limits of composition and the possibilities of each environment, while ensuring and maintaining a coherent whole. They chose the Mercure typeface, designed by Charles Mazé and distributed by the Abyme foundry, whose design is itself the result of a consideration of tools and their evolution.
