Massin | by Courtney Cronin

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Spreads from La Cantatrice chauve (Paris, Gallimard, 1964): pages 1-17, 24-37, 42-51, 90-7, 100-15, 128-43, and 150-87

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4 Draft double-page spreads on tracing paper for La Cantatrice chauve (Paris, Gillimard, 1964)

The Beginning

R

obert Massin, who later dropped his first name in 1950 and has since gone by just Massin, is a French graphic designer,

typographer, art director, and head of one of the leading book publishers in France Editors Gallimard.

He was born in 1925 in a little town in Northern France

“There are no ugly typefaces, you just have to know how to use them.” -Massin

called Bourdiniere-Saint-Loup. He credits his influence being that of the French book designer Piere Faucheux in his ways of making typography the main focus of the cover. He is often quoted with saying there

are no ugly typefaces, you just have to know how to use them. Massin is widely known for his creation of the graphic staging of Ionesco’s play La Cantatrice and La Lettre et l’image (Letter and Image), a highly imaginative masterpiece of figurative alphabets from the eighth to the twentieth century.

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hy p a r g Typo as

ent m e v o M

M

assin transcends many long-established boundaries in graphic design and typography. To him a typographers failure

is creating a lifeless corpse of a layout of a page, or a

“A play is nothing but

spread, or book cover. If the typographer

a lifeless corpse if the

doesn’t give the reader the sense that he is

typographer doesn’t

in a seat at the theater then he is not doing

give the reader the sense what he claims he is able to do with his that he is in a seat at the job title. His career has spanned editorial theater.” - Massin

graphics, poster and logo design, art

direction, typography, photography, publishing design education and writing.

Experiment in expressive typography, Viens Poupoule!, song written by Mayol in 1902 (Paris, Typographies expressives, 2006)

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L

ong before the idiosyncratic and broken type of the ‘90s, Massin dared to play with letters as well as manipulating the alphabet,

cutting titles, experimenting with forms, signs and fonts and creating surprising three-dimensional limited-edition covers. Type is not just letters but

“It was precisely because I

are things that express a variety of things

couldn’t draw that I always

from moods, to expressions, to movement.

relied on existing lettering-

It was precisely because he couldn’t draw

distorting the type was my way that he always relied on existing letteringof drawing. It meant looking

distorting the type was his way of drawing.

sideways, playing with what can It meant looking sideways, playing with seem to be a rigid whole, in other what can seem to be a rigid whole, in other words the alphabet.”- Massin

words the alphabet. Especially Massin’s

work in the Bald Sopranos, he gave each character a different typeface, varying in size, angle, and placement to convey the nuances of the spoken language.

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Animated figures taken from an etching, Italy, early nineteenth century; copperplate engraving in color, France, 1834; alphabet lithograph, Paris 1836

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Inside spreads of Der kranke Mond, Der Mondfleck and Himfahrt

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Sorces: Hollis, Richard. “Eye Magazine.” Eye Magazine. 1995. Accessed April 18, 2016. http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/language-unleashed.

Munari, Nicola-Matteo. “Designculture • Robert Massin.” Designculture • Robert Massin. October 28, 2013. Accessed April 18, 2016. http://www. designculture.it/interview/robert-massin.html.

Wolff, Laetitia, and Massin. Massin. London: Phaidon, 2007.

Designed and written by Courtney Cronin Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in 1990 Printed from a Toshiba 289 onto Hammermill 80# text.

Copyright © 2016 Courtney Cronin, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art

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