“Les murs ont la parole”. Journal mural mai 68 by Julien Besançon

Published January 19, 2024

By FontsInUse

Photo(s) by Alexis Orloff on Flickr.

Front cover

From The Idea of the Book:

A book of transcribed quotes in French from the graffitied streets captured during May 1968 events in Paris. Each quote throughout the book is typeset in a different serif or sans serif font, creating a reading experience that feels like a type specimen combined with revolt.

“Les murs ont la parole” was compiled by journalist Julien Besançon (1932–2017) and published in landscape format by Claude Tchou (1923–2010), Paris, in June 1968. In 2018, MIT Press published an English edition under the title The Walls Have the Floor, translated by Henry Vale.

Gérard Lo Monaco (b. 1948) was in charge of the design. See his portfolio website for additional pages. The front and back covers are set in Folio, which was known as Caravelle in France. While the title is shown in the Bold weight, with added thin and straight quote marks, the smaller text uses the Medium Extended. The typefaces used on the interior pages largely correspond to Massimo Vignelli’s Canon.

Back cover

The title is set in caps from a Caslon and a Garamond. ITC Founder’s Caslon 42 by Justin Howes is a digital version that comes close to the former.

Helvetica

Futura and Times New Roman

“Dessous les pavés c’est la plage…” in Bodoni

“JE JOUIS dans les pavés” in a large Caslon, cf. Matthew Carter’s digital Big Caslon

“Ne consommons pas Marx”, combining Futura and Bodoni

“Déculottez vos phrases pour être à la hauteur des sans culottes” in Chicago, see Angelus-Mediäval

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

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An independent archive of typography.