A comme Palaios - Une Étude Paléomythoanthropologique du A
La mythologie est un dictionnaire d’hiéroglyphes vivants, hiéroglyphes connus de tout le monde.
— L’Art Romantique, Baudelaire
— L’Art Romantique, Baudelaire
Overview of the project
A comme Palaios, or "A as Palaios - A Paleomythoanthropological Study of the A", is my diploma project for my Typography and Graphic Design Master Degree at the ECV Paris.
It is a voyage through space, time, and mythology. Through ten Gods, inspired by real or fictional mythologies and religions, and by simply looking at nature and the world of objects around me to find hidden fossils and relics, I propose to reinvent the letter A.
Each ten Gods correspond to 10 chosen steps of the evolution of the letter A, such as the Egyptian, Gothic or Roman Capital. Under the eye of fiction, I adopt a paleontological and anthropological point of view, not only to imagine through mythology what could be sources and shapes of the letter A of the future, from today's objects, which are tomorrow's fossils; but also to search for the origins of the A, starting from the present, by studying its formal evolution through time.
The project's name comes from the greek term for "ancient", because paleontology is the study of ancient life, but also because typography is itself an ancient science, and because this project articulates around the notion of fossils, by definition ancient. Palaios is, in this mythology, the name of the Pantheon of Gods. A comme Palaios is narrated through the fictional eyes of Alice Alef, a paleontologist and anthropologist living in the World of Men, which is the world that surrounds us, opposed to Palaios, the World of Gods (that can only be explored by these scientists, the Typographers).
The Essences of the Tens.
0. Manifeste, Création, Colophon
These three neutrally designed, half-A4 portrait booklets come, like video games manuals, explain the project and project it into reality, by explaining the genesis of A comme Palaios, by putting in context the graphic nature of the project as a whole as well as the origin of the idea of it, by telling the story of the ten Gods and why they came to be chosen by me to be included here, as well as their genealogy and intricate family links.
The three booklets - in order, Manifeste, then Création, then Colophon.
1. Livrets (Booklets)
The first step of A like Palaios, and the meat of it, is a set of 480 pages in total, separated in ten A5 sized booklets of 48 pages each, corresponding to the Ten Gods, each with its corresponding colour.
These booklets are seen as rare books that a curator of a museum of En-Bas ("Down-Below", one of the places of the World of Men) would have put together for an exhibition. The 200 photos, organised by alphabetical order, are all taken by myself with an iPhone 7, and have been put in black and white to transcript the ancient and elegant nature of the project. The fact that the drawings aren't smooth lines but choppy ones stems from a will to invoke a feeling of mechanism, an idea that the hand of Men would have been around, were the photos resume reality to perfection.
The covers of the ten booklets, each colour corresponding to a God (red for Ares the Fourth, the God of War; grey for Agnostos the Tenth, God of the Unknown, and so forth...
An index at the end of each booklet presents all the photos corresponding to the particular God they belong to. The photos, sorted out in alphabetical order, are divided by their subject: Nature or Objects. Data, represented by a percentage at the end of the page, aids the reader to determine whether the particular shape of the A they're looking at is more organic or mechanical, which can nourish their own typography practice.
The 200 photos have been taken exclusively at my grandparents' place, an old and big French château with accompanying woods.
A fictitious transcript of fragments of scrolls telling who the Tens are come nourish, as "flavour texts" such as in video games, the relics and fossils identified.
Narrated by the fictional Alice Alef, here lays the story of all of the Ten Gods (ten chosen steps of the evolution of the letter A).
The drawings might be easy to decipher, or they might require a considerable amount of open-mindedness in order to be discovered. But the principle of A comme Palaios is that, the more you look, the more you understand. The photos are always on the right hand side, followed by a mirrored drawing, allowing the reader to understand where the shape of the A comes from.
A few spreads from Arkangel, the Ninth God. Learning to look at the sometimes very pragmatic, world around us to find new shapes of the A, here reminiscent of a pixelated form of the letter.
2. Essences
The second step is equivalent to Essences, so a set of ten A2 sized posters, each corresponding to one of the Tens. Their principle is that they are as if a map of the restoration of fossils, of the reconstitution of each fossil fragments into a complete fossil, which is the A corresponding to the appearance of the God. For example, for Arkangel, the Ninth, we can find each twenty fragments, so each twenty drawings, which form when put together an A corresponding to the pixel appearance of Arkangel. Same goes for each of the other Gods.
Left: Altaïr Anzû's Essence, in its corresponding colour. Right: Arkangel's Essence. Gothic vs Pixel Interpretation.
Overview of the ten Essences. In order: Api, Aman, Aurelia, Ares, Aeon, Altaïr Anzû, Agorena, Astria, Arkangel, Agnostos.
3. Panthéon
The third step, Panthéon, is perhaps the core of the project, along with the Livrets. It is, as an A3 sized booklet, a set of fragments of Gods fossils mixed who reconstitute, when put together, new shapes of the A, new relics of the A of the future. It is actually purely formal research - an attempt to find what could the letter A look like in the future if it was inspired by its own history, as well as Nature and the Objects around us.
4. Index (Reliques & Fossiles: Fragments)
Relics and Fossils: Fragments, proposes in a more visible manner, like an exhibition catalogue or an index, a directory of all the 200 drawings of the letter A corresponding to each God found in Nature and Objects, as well as the ten essences. It completes the project by allowing an overview.
Conclusion
A comme Palaios is not a scientific thinking or academic research on the letter A, in fact it's what it's trying to avoid. It is, hopefully, a poetic interpretation, even esoteric or mystical, of the letter A and its evolution in the future. It is designed to invite the reader to learn to look at the world around them to nourish their typography practice. The myth is here a key to comprehend the world around us, because typography is, essentially, communication. As the poetry of everyday objects tell the story and the evolution of their owners, we can consider each step of the creation of the letter A of today as a character or a poetic notion.
Since in each object we can find the evolution of its matter, from its creation to the present where we perceive it, why not compare the letter A to a an object or character, who would have itself an evolution in steps, attributes, a story and a personality that would be its own? Why not consider each representation of the letter A as a relic, bearing the tracks of the past of the letter? A is not B, an ox head is not a human leg; but an ox head is not, physically, two lines crossing plus a lien in the middle.
Since in each object we can find the evolution of its matter, from its creation to the present where we perceive it, why not compare the letter A to a an object or character, who would have itself an evolution in steps, attributes, a story and a personality that would be its own? Why not consider each representation of the letter A as a relic, bearing the tracks of the past of the letter? A is not B, an ox head is not a human leg; but an ox head is not, physically, two lines crossing plus a lien in the middle.
So there is indeed an evolution, different steps of the letter A, from more concrete and physical, to more abstract and immaterial (ox skull versus letter on a smartphone screen). Each future step of the A bears the weight of millenaries of evolution, and A like Palaios only answers but a single answer amongst an infinity.
Printed by the Imprimerie Launay, Paris.
For the ECV Paris Typography and Graphic Design Master Degree, 2020.
For the ECV Paris Typography and Graphic Design Master Degree, 2020.
Thank you to M. Blom
Thank you so much for watching :)
Please feel free to contact me for any precisions about this project!
