Sustain — Concerts, talks and panel discussions to make change resonate in the sharing of live music

Stomp your feet on the dance floor and bang your fist on the table. That’s the premise of the Sustain festival, a testing ground for contemporary music and new ideas conceived by L’Aéronef, the legendary concert venue in the Lille region. Concerts and panel discussions punctuate a weekend across the city, in collaboration with a host of partners, exploring the future of live music from an ecological perspective.

In line with this approach, the visual identity of this edition of Sustain set itself a major challenge: to design all communication materials so that only a single print run would be required, with the aim of minimising the environmental impact of their production.

Where multiple print runs would otherwise have been necessary, a single print run produced 600 posters measuring 70 × 100 cm, 700 posters measuring 40 × 60 cm, 3,000 programme leaflets, and 200 notebook covers, while optimising resources: a limited number of sheets, rational use of aluminium plates, and reduction of paper waste by deceasing machine set-up.

The visuals interlock with one another, providing both an insight into the technical approach described above and a suggestion of the festival’s conceptual vision: a message that unfolds, amplifies, and resonates. The printing matrix (the 70 × 100 cm poster, which is the largest format) then incorporates all the other formats.

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We Loft Music No. 5 — The fifth edition of Roubaix’s music festival

For its return in 2025 after a year off, we approached the identity of this fifth edition with significant budget constraints.

Economically viable solutions had to be found to preserve the key elements of the visual identity developed up to that point, particularly the use of fluorescent colours. The colour approach therefore had to be reconsidered from the printing perspective. Instead of printing in offset or screen printing, which were beyond our budget, we opted for pre-dyed fluorescent yellow stickers, on which practical information was printed.

In return, we had to manually apply approximately 6,500 stickers—thanks to the volunteers!—onto all the materials (1,000 A2 posters and 5,000 A6 flyers). We also took advantage of this approach to create varied compositions for the 85 formats measuring 118.5 × 175 cm that completed the set of documents.

Ultimately, this strong constraint allowed us to add uniqueness to the visual signature in a mass-production context. Each item then becomes a complement to the whole, offering a variation (sometimes subtle, sometimes more striking) on the same theme.

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Photosensibles — A report on the workshops held by 5 photographers in the Pas-de-Calais department

The 2021-2022 cultural season marked the first collaboration between the Pas-de-Calais department and the Institute for Photography. Between past, present and future, this collaboration focused on questions about our archive images—both individual and collective—and the human and environmental realities of this territory.

The project was carried out at the Bellimont (Pernes), Albert Camus (Outreau) and Jacques Brel (Fruges) secondary schools, at the Centre d’Accueil et d’Examen des Situations in Nédonchel, and in three social and judiciary structures in Saint-Omer (the Plateforme d’aide aux aidants ELSAA, the Maison des Adolescents Littoral and the Protection Judiciaire de la Jeunesse) that photographers Catherine Duverger, Matthieu Gafsou, Cédric Gerbehaye, Hugo Clarence Janody and Lionel Pralus invited the people involved to use images – their own and those of others – to express in a different way what intimately moves them.

This publication looks at the stories told, imagined and sometimes hoped through five distinctive graphic objects.

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Welcome to "Porte de Valenciennes" — A welcome kit for the new inhabitants

In 2020, as part of the urban renewal of the Porte de Valenciennes district in Lille, SPL Euralille invited us to create a unique graphic object to present the district to new residents.

We decided to propose a box containing multiple documents. These documents take the form of graphic transcriptions of urban landscapes and contemporary and historical architectural details (before and after their rehabilitation).

In addition to a poster/guide map, 10 enigmatic postcards featuring hybrid architecture offer a glimpse of the district’s key (but sometimes little-known) places, serving as invitations to explore the city.

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Bon Voyage to Roubaix — An invitation to discover the city’s emblematic places through the sensitive prism of the inhabitants’ experience

The Lille World Design Capital 2020 event was an opportunity to collaborate with Ville Renouvelée and lille—design to rethink the transitional space that is the car park at Roubaix train station.

In association with the Graphites collective (Karen Fioravanti, Camille Hamard and Chloé Wizla), our proposal is based on a simple idea: to encourage users to discover the city as soon as they get out of their car, through the voices of its inhabitants.

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Aperçu avant impression (Print preview) — A residency focused on an art centre’s archives

In 2019, espace 36 began a new cycle of annual creative residencies dedicated to supporting graphic design. As part of this initiative, we were invited by the espace 36 team (Benoît Warzée, Ségolène Gabriel and Marina Grebert) to produce a work of art, which we presented in January 2020 as part of a final exhibition.

We used the 20th anniversary marking the renewal of the association’s project as an opportunity to delve into the history of the space through an exploration of its archives.

This research led to the creation of a poster (118.5 × 175 cm)—a matrix for a large-format edition, a series of posters, and all the communication documents—composed of layered memories from the venue with the intuition that the piece of art and its communication are merely extensions of a unified whole.

As is often the case in our approach, the production process complements and supports this reflection.

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Confidence — An edition halfway between a restitution and a piece of art

During his residency at the Ferme du Bois Briard in Courcouronnes, Julien Levesque intervened, following our suggestion and with our complicity, on the running offset presses at the Havet printing factory in Sailly-sur-la-Lys, by adding different inks directly to a group of colours to produce an edition that we had designed specifically for this experiment.

It is a hybrid documentary object, halfway between a restitution and a work of art, composed of images and fragments retracing the course of his year of creation.

300 copies of this edition, unique occurrences reflecting as many micro-variations, were produced, then exhibited and distributed to mark the end of Julien Levesque’s residency.

More than a catalogue, this publishing object can be seen as a multiple that develops, in the age of networks, the hypothesis of repetition and the original, leading to a reflection on the book-making process.

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Notebook: The Urban Project — An exercise book on urban renewal

With this notebook, IREV, the Hauts-de-France urban planning resource centre, aims to compile the methodological lessons learned from conducting urban projects and encourage their application through exercises specifically designed for this edition.

This document serves as a tool for urban renewal project managers and their partners.

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