A retrospective of 10 years of graphic and typographic research by Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé during their residency at the Brétigny Art Center, presented as an alphabet book comprising 901 collected letters and symbols.
Amongst the 91 different cover designs of the book The ABCC of CACB, one can see:
a letter from the shop sign of Retouche Les 3 "A" in Brétigny-sur-Orge,
a letter painted by Lucien Bertin in a mural in Juvisy-sur-Orge, a letter in the form of a Cool S graffitied in the Grigny 2 neighbourhood, a smiling sun from an illustration in the magazine Brétigny Notre Ville in 1982, a phallus graffitied on the walls of the Espace Jules Verne in Brétigny-sur-Orge, a cat drawn by Valentine Schlegel on a postcard in 1981, an Instagram story from 2021 sharing some PNL lyrics, a Mesolithic petroglyph from the adorned caves in Boigneville…
Seemingly disparate, these signs are in fact part of a single whole: an alphabet depicting the typographic landscape of CAC Brétigny, a contemporary art centre in the southern suburbs of Paris, where Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé were graphic designers-in-residence from 2016 to 2025. The ABCC of CACB seeks to edit a geographic, political and artistic context through the signs that constitute it. It is an epigraphic record of daily life, an inventory of "today's hieroglyphs".
This book comes with 91 different covers, randomly distributed.
Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé form a duo working as graphic designers and typographers. Previously based in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, they now live in Marseille and Paris. They held a fellowship (2014-15) and then a residency (2023) at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, where they studied popular writing in public spaces. From 2016 to 2025 the pair were graphic designers in residency at CAC Brétigny, where they ideated the art centre's visual identity as a space for long-term research. Coline Sunier teaches at the Institut supérieur des arts de Toulouse (isdaT). Charles Mazé supervises research projects at the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT) in Nancy. Their work has been recognised with awards including the Prix Fernand Baudin (2011, 2013), the Prix unique du livre (2021, 2025) and a Silver Medal in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition (2022), as well as being named among the Most Beautiful Swiss Books (2025). In 2026, the Jan Tschichold Award has been awarded to their Franco-Swiss duo.
They founded the publishing structure ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ in 2020.
