sabina swiss shoutout: with Swiss Typefaces, Swiss typography continues to shine internationally

In popular discourse, Switzerland is often referred to as a slow-moving country, lacking initiative and inclined to innocently follow its neighbors’ lead. That its borders, however narrow, prevented its residents from being inspired, let alone inspiring. By presenting counter-examples as notable as they are diverse, we wanted to challenge, through a series of articles, stereotypes that remain entrenched even in a digital world free of territorial demarcations. We’re doing this by offering you the chance to discover or rediscover some of the worthy heirs of the “Swiss style”, almost 70 years after it conquered the greatest European and world capitals, with its recognizable logos and typefaces, filled with New Wave and Pop art in particular. In a few lines a month, we’ll be spotlighting those who make the Swiss art scene what it is in 2020: a skilful blend of heritage in a country of graphic design and innovation, nourished by the cultural contributions of a mix that is today Switzerland’s creative wealth.

Today, our country is brimming with talent in the alternative and artistic spheres, and our public education system – in contrast to other, sometimes bordering, countries – still often invites students from all walks of life to train and develop in a framework of quality (and equality?), following in the footsteps of the likes of Max Miedinger, Adrian Frutiger and Josef Müller-Brockmann, initiators among many others of this trend also known as “international typographic style”. Recognizable at first glance, it conveys precision, fluidity and functionality – characteristics that have enabled it to make its mark beyond its borders and, as its name suggests, seduce audiences from Istanbul to Hong Kong, by way of Paris. Logos and, above all, fonts that bring a sometimes cold vision of reality to the table, with the aim of delivering accurate information thanks to a pronounced sense of detail. Helvetica is still the symbol of this, with strokes so pure, so universal, that for more than half a century, they have been making the New York subway shine, as well as brands such as McDonalds, Tupperware and even Evian.

Before speaking in the present tense, let’s not forget that the Swiss style has not always met with unanimous approval. It went into decline in the 70s, with some believing it to be too severe, while others understood that a trend of this magnitude inevitably generates weariness and opposition. Several decades later, it seems to be reclaiming its rights, benefiting in particular from the abundance of styles that have emerged over the last ten or even twenty years, as a result of the advent of digital technology and its innumerable and highly accessible possibilities. A freer, denser and sometimes more extravagant creative landscape, for better or worse, has reminded us that the functional applications and intrinsic elegance of “Swiss style” still have much to offer. Long localized between Zürich and Basel, the movement’s hard core is now to be found around Lausanne, where ECAL has been running courses exclusively dedicated to typographic design since the early 2000s, under the supervision of François Rappo, which have seen a plethora of young talent blossom and infuse the style of an entire country with fresh blood.

In this first installment of sabina swiss shoutout, we take a look at the direct descendants of this revival in French-speaking Switzerland. Based on the Riviera, in Vevey to be precise, the creators of “Suisse Int’l”, the typeface we’ve chosen for our entire graphic charter inaugurated in 2018, have been steadily developing for over a decade now. While Ian Party, one of the studio’s two co-founders, recently jumped ship to devote himself to his Newglyph project (which will certainly be the subject of a future article on this blog), Emmanuel Rey continues to tackle the task, still assisted by a certain Maxime Plescia Buschi, second co-founder of Swisstype Faces and artist-entrepreneur with a CV that would be enough to feed our pages for several months. To avoid the complex, we’ll just mention a few collaborations with Hublot and the opening of several tattoo parlors with worldwide success. The frustrated Swiss will find this acceptable, ironically commenting on the supposedly low impact of Swiss creations abroad.

With more than a dozen font families in their catalog, the company claims an aesthetic as well as a technological approach, and strives to constantly innovate and banish boredom, while preserving the heritage and style of a country that produced some of the greatest typographers of the 20th century. Their offering includes Swiss Int’l, which can be seen as the offspring, the modernization, the evolution of the famous Helvetica, while their digital stalls feature a number of styles that are more difficult to categorize, more experimental. It’s certainly this fringe of their work that has earned them their worldwide reputation, since it’s this openness to the world, this curiosity, and these countless influences (music, street culture, fashion, tattooing, fine art, etc.), coupled with decades of finesse, that ultimately symbolize today’s Switzerland so well and justify the full blossoming of an entire artistic movement that high schools, creative studios and other collectives, able to count on ever more curious and invested members, do nothing but fuel.

In 2020, Swisstype Faces designs will be exported to posters, watches, airplanes and clothing. With a busy schedule, on Mondays they take part in the launch of a textile collection, on Thursdays they update a font with the arrival of a Cyrillic version, before taking part, on Sundays, in the development of a video clip for a rapper from their city. A token of global credibility on the one hand, and proof of eclectic, multi-disciplinary work on the other, for our compatriots who in just a few years have become veritable inspirations for artists in our own country. The choice of a typeface from their production for our corporate identity was an obvious one, since, over and above our admiration for them, one of our graphic designers who took part in the project was a graduate of the ECAL and, as part of his course, had had the opportunity to work alongside the founders of Swisstype Faces, who regularly teach at the same institution regularly ranked among the top 10 art and design schools in the world. Our team, whose artistic director Sabine Blunier is herself a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (now ECAL), shared with the Veveyans these healthy values, oscillating between an assertive conservatism and a vision that is highly permeable to societal, artistic and technological evolutions.

It’s been two years since we chose to display Switzerland Int’l on our logo, our website, our mailings and our digital creations. What can we say at the dawn of a new year, except that this choice has so far never been the subject of a single doubt, a single criticism, either in our open space or once we’ve passed the Avenue du Mont-d’Or, in the great bath of anxiety, frustration and questioning that COVID has created. This is certainly a good sign.

J. Lin