The reissue of issue 34 of the critical graphic design journal: a questioning of the criterion of "beauty" applied to typography and the challenges of the "Most Beautiful Swiss Books" award.
It was during the century of Enlightenment that aesthetics became autonomous, that the Beautiful separated itself from the Good and the Useful, like a form of free access to meaning, to truth. And one might well ask if, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, design, from dessin to dessein, has not to some extent taken up the torch of the applied techniques of the former regime of the art of doing and making, and of beauty. What has become of the term "beautiful" as applied to typography, understood as the art of shaping books, since 1943 and the establishment of the "Most Beautiful Swiss Books" award under the influence of the famous Jan Tschichold?
Faire is a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to
graphic design, published from October to June, distributed issue by issue or in the form of anthologies of three or four issues. Created by
Empire,
Syndicat studio's publishing house,
Faire is aimed for undergraduate students as well as researchers and professionals, documenting contemporary and international practices of graphic design, along with the history and grammar of styles. Each issue focuses on a single subject, addressed by a renowned author. Adopting an analytical and critical posture with regard to the forms and activities of graphic design, editors Sacha Léopold and François Havegeer have been running this print magazine since 2018, working with a growing list of authors (
Mathias Augustyniak,
Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, Lise Brosseau, Manon Bruet,
Thierry Chancogne, Céline Chazalviel,
Jérôme Dupeyrat, Aude Fellay, Catherine Guiral, Étienne Hervy, James Langdon, Olivier Lebrun, Victoire Le Bars,
Alexandra Midal, Camille Pageard,
Remi Parcollet,
Sonia de Puineuf, Simon Renaud, Benjamin Thorel, Rica Cerbarano...), resulting in unique and varied topics and writing styles.
