Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, March 15, 2022: Philippe Apeloig, French graphic designer and typographer (#1521)

Philippe Apeloig (1962) is a French graphic designer and typographer born in Paris

Philippe Apeloig studied at the École supérieure des arts appliqués Duperré, then at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs. It was during two internships undertaken in 1983 and 1985, at Wim Crouwel's Total Design in Amsterdam, that he became particularly interested in typography.

Philippe Apeloig began his career as a graphic designer in 1985 at Musée d’Orsay, where he implemented the visual identity conceived by Bruno Monguzzi and Jean Widmer, and created the poster for the first exhibition Chicago, naissance d’une métropole. In 1988, he obtained a grant from the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères and set off to work in Los Angeles with April Greiman. Back from California, Apeloig created his own studio in Paris in 1989, and became art director for the magazine Le Jardin des Modes.

In 1993–1994, he was a Fellow at l'Académie de France à Rome, Villa Médicis, where he developed original typographic fonts. From this work he obtained the Gold Award from the Tokyo Type Director Club. He was named art consultant of the Louvre museum in 1997, and became its art director from 2003 to 2007.

From 1992 to 1998, Philippe Apeloig has taught typography and graphic design at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (Ensad). In 1998, he moved to the United States for five years where he taught at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, and at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1999, he was hired Full-time faculty by the Cooper Union School of Art of New York, where he also occupied the position of curator of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography.

Philippe Apeloig has created the logotypes and visual identities for Musée de France, for the Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme for its opening in 1997 in Paris, the IUAV (Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia) in Venice, the Châtelet Théâtre in Paris, the estate group Icade, Médiateur européen, the year of Brazil in France Brésil-Brésils (2004), the year Cézanne in Aix-en-Provence (2006), the Palais de la Découverte (2010), the Petit Palais - Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris, the French Institute / Alliance Française of New York (FIAF), the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Puiforcat, the cinema Le Balzac, and l'Ameublement français (a French professional union that represents furniture industries and companies).

He creates the visual identity The Manufacture de Sèvres (National ceramic factory), who offered him to create visuals on threes ceramic table services in 2017. This project has been exposed in the Parisian gallery of the Manufacture de Sèvres.

At the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, SNCF Gares & Connexions (the society in charge of the railway stations in France) invited him to display a typographical interpretation of the fundamental text, in over a hundred station.

In 2015 and 2019, he exposes drawings and watercolors at the Parisian gallery Gilles Drouault Galerie / Multiples.

In October 2018, the French publishing house, Gallimard, released Philippe Apeloig's book: Enfants de Paris, 1939-1945. This voluminous object (1.100 pages) gathered all the Second World War commemoraties plaques in Paris. At the crossroads of typography and history, this graphic piece shows an original vision of the French capital. For this book, Philippe Apeloig received the Prix Thiers de l’Académie française.

Many of Philippe Apeloig's designs belong to the collections of the MoMA,[1] the SFMOMA, the LACMA, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs à Paris, the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of New York, the Museum für Gestaltung of Zurich, the Maison du Livre et de l'Affiche de Chaumont, the Deutsches Plakat Museum in Essen, the Poster Museum à Lahti and the Ogaki Poster Museum au Japon.

He was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2011.

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