When we set up deValence twenty years ago, we were fortunate enough to find a place among the independent designers working in Paris. We came from the city of Valence (south of Lyon, in eastern France) where we had studied for two years and we named our studio after it. We believed it was important to stress the fact that we did not come from the capital and that, for someone wanting to set up a business in this field, it is not obligatory to have trained in Paris. We found there was room for the approach we wanted to develop in graphic design. We wanted to concentrate on text and its relationship to images, taking a pragmatic and concise point of view. Our principles included “no ornamentation, no text on images, no stylistic self-indulgence” and, more generally “no symbolism”.

We felt it was essential to be seen as designers rather than artists. With this in mind, we set out to produce a stripped-down design influenced by Swiss and Dutch designers. Structure was placed before the finished image. For us, the most important thing was the way the message is transmitted to the viewer or reader.

From the outset, one of our principles was that text should never be placed on an image. Our belief was that, in a page layout, images should have an equal status with text. Typography is a tool that can highlight the force of a message or, alternatively, the insignificance of an intention. We create systems that depend on both typography and the available space on a page or screen. That’s the basis of our work.

The first thing to say is that for all of us it’s impossible to work on our own. During our training we very quickly began to work in groups and found we enjoyed it. It could just as well have been as a group of musicians because we often got together to play music or spend time with friends like the artist Raphaël Zarka. We have always exchanged ideas, tested out hypotheses and shared our work so as to arrive together at the realization of a project through the construction of form. Our studio bases itself on this principle. Today, thanks to the experience acquired over the last decade, we are in a position to take on bigger commissions. We deal with all kinds of subjects and materials, calling on various different skills depending on the project (design of typefaces, animation, etc.).

The arrangement of images and words in a two-dimensional space is not an end in itself. That is not design. The work of the designer in arranging different forms is always done with a view to what will happen in the future. For example, the simple act of placing a page number on a page of a book is not just a matter of positioning it there but also asking whether the number placed in this way will work for all the other pages of the book.

Or, in the case of a visual identity, we check and try out the forms we have designed in a whole group of other situations. A form does not exist in isolation. It always resonates with other forms of different types. To give you a more specific example, the visual identity we designed for the La Commune Theater in 2014 is based on a simple system. Firstly, the language, which is to say the name of the theater presented in a simple linear font. The characters are very plain and do not distract from the name of the theatre which refers to the Paris Commune of 1871. The text used on the brochure is set in a classic font. The only images are those provided by a photographer we commissioned to document the theater’s context. The only place where our design subjectivity comes into play is in the design of posters for the events at the theater. Just as a director puts and arranges actors on stage, so we use the space on the poster to create a visual announcement for the play. All these elements, appearing to the spectators at different times, constitute our system.

It is important to be clear that we are not exclusively designers of typefaces. Those that we have designed were produced for very specific occasions. The characters are either contextual (specific to a particular visual identity or signage project, for example), or their design is created to respond to a particular need or working tool. Dada Grotesk (designed with Gaël Etienne in 2005) was created for the catalogue we produced for the Dada exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Plus, in its various versions, is a condensed and very bold titling character that we needed for our work. And then there are others like that designed (by Alex Chavot) for the Maison de la Vache qui rit, taking its inspiration from the brand’s cheese boxes of the 1920s.

We see typography as a material – something we can model and arrange as we wish. Drawing and manipulating letter design is something we have always enjoyed in our work. But at the same time the typefaces we use for a book or internet site are always very clear and legible. The typography accompanies the reader towards the information, the content that is given as knowledge. We also like to play with typographical conventions, uses and habits. While we are scrupulously careful to respect the rules of text composition, we enjoy questioning the way in which certain structural elements appear, follow on from one another, give rhythm to a book or play with the visible space.