Thomas Huot-Marchand
Typographie
Design graphique

  • 2017

  • Park MGM Las Vegas × be pôles

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  • 2017

  • Park MGM Las Vegas × be pôles

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Park MGM is the new name of the famous Hotel Montecarlo, on the Las Vegas Strip (Nevada). It is owned by MGM Resorts. The agency be-poles (Paris / New York) commissioned me to design the exclusive typeface of the hotel, used for its interior and exterior signage, and all of its communication.
Rather than the excessive and often caricatured image of the hotels in the city, the visual identity of the Park MGM chooses elegance, with a very refined interior design. Likewise, the typography created for signage is inspired by the proportions of classic Roman capitals, with a more contemporary design. The signs were manufactured in Las Vegas by Yesco. The interior signs are extruded, with an inverted triangular cut, and backlit. The outdoor signs, on top of the building, are absolutely gigantic: letters are 5 meters high.
Photos ©Benoît Linero ©Patrick Chin ©Reynald Philippe ©Thomas HM

  • 2008

  • Musiques de Rues — Programme

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  • 2008

  • Musiques de Rues — Programme

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Programme of the 3rd edition of Musiques de Rues, a festival of contemporary brass bands and artistic interventions in public space. Printed in 3 fluorescent colors + black, instead of CMYK

  • 2014

  • Ici l’Onde

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  • 2014

  • Ici l’Onde

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For the 2014 poster of Ici l’Onde, I captured the light of the text, shaking my laptop and simply shooting the screen. We made 4 posters out of it : the annual poster in 3 tones (warm red, process blue and gold), and 3 trimestrial variations with only 2 tones (red/blue, red/gold, and blue/gold).

  • 2022

  • Bordures 2022

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  • 2022

  • Bordures 2022

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Poster for the 2022 edition of BORDURES Festival in Langon.

  • 2021

  • Samaritaine × Ateliers Saint-Lazare

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  • 2021

  • Samaritaine × Ateliers Saint-Lazare

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I was commissioned by Ateliers Saint-Lazare (formerly known as be-pôles) to develop the typographic brand identity of Samaritaine, a much-loved iconic edifice situated in the heart of Paris. Born 151 years ago, La Samaritaine reopened in June 2021 after a 17 years closure.

The logotype captures the spirit of historic Samaritaine signs, honoring the stylistic evolution of the landmarked building. The singular silhouette of the distinctive historic letters, are blended into the logotype and a type family. Samaritaine Sans exists in 2 cuts: the first one features historical forms, inspired by Art Deco and Art nouveau letters, and is used for the wordmark. The second one has a more modern look, for daily use.

Art Deco style

Visual dentity by Ateliers Saint-Lazare, 2021 (art Direction: Reynald Philippe).

  • 2023

  • La Vache qui rit

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  • 2023

  • La Vache qui rit

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Custom typeface for La Vache qui rit (Bel).
The specific triangular shape of the slices of this popular soft cheese appears in many details of the typeface (A counter, diacritics, quotes…)
Laughing fonts include a “Bounce” weight, with a special feature which makes the letters randomly wiggling on the baseline.
Commissioned by BETC Paris
Art Direction Éric Poupy

  • 2023

  • Les 2 Scènes — Cinéma 22-23

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  • 2023

  • Les 2 Scènes — Cinéma 22-23

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Posters for the season 2022-2023 of Les 2 Scènes Cinéma.
Typeset in Album Sans

  • 2015

  • Biennale de Lyon — project

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  • 2015

  • Biennale de Lyon — project

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Ralph Rugoff, guest curator of 2015 Biennale de Lyon: “The impulse to announce a clean break from the past, to instigate a rupture with tradition, is the modernist gesture par excellence. Is it possible then, that our recurring desire to declare the end of the modern era is, in fact, merely a symptom of the modernity it aspires to bury? […] La vie moderne, the 13th edition of the Biennale de Lyon, sets out to explore this possibility. Its title unavoidably evokes echoes of earlier, and perhaps more optimistic, moments in history, but rather than its potential irony, what drew me to use this title was its ambiguity.” Invited to design the visual identity of the event, my (rejected) project was to propose an oversized identity manual, playing with the principles of modernist graphic design of the 60's. Rather than applying this guidelines to the communication, the manual itself (as an abstract of ideal uses) becomes the communication. It's, of course, typeset in Neue Haas Grotesk.

  • 2010

  • Musée d’Orsay

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  • 2010

  • Musée d’Orsay

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The Musée d’Orsay wanted, in 2010, to renew its typography, returning to the typeface defined in its original visual identity, developed by Bruno Monguzzi and Jean Widmer (1986). The museum will was to update Walbaum, cut by Justus Erich Walbaum (around 1830), then unique typographic voice of the institution. With Philippe Millot, we defined a family of «cousins» of Walbaum, in styles that appeared later in the 19th century. For text typefaces, a Grotesk (sans serif and bold), and a Typewriter (slab serifs, low contrast, and light). For display typefaces, the uppercase present variations of texture in the manner of 19th century display type. Unfortunately, the Museum barely used this new typeface system.

  • 2020

  • Garaje Monospace

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  • 2020

  • Garaje Monospace

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Garaje takes its inspiration both from the alphabets of the Bauhaus school and the vernacular inscriptions of Spanish garage owners: two worlds that share a desire to reduce typographic forms to simple geometric elements. At the Bauhaus this geometrization is ideological: it represents a rejection of tradition and the affirmation of an objective and rational vocabulary. With garage owners it is a simple matter of logic, certainly due to an ignorance of tradition. It is somewhat naïve to wish to reduce the shapes of the alphabet to elementary forms. Perfect geometrical forms seem less than perfect to our eyes: type Design abounds with optical corrections that compensate for our perception of forms.
Garaje plays specifically with this paradox: its construction is rigorously geometrical, anchored to a scalable modular grid, with no optical correction. A perfectly objective system, but a typographical aberration, simultaneously right and wrong. For the last 20 years, I have extended this family in every direction, to the point of absurdity: extremely narrow or outlandishly wide letterforms, all built from the same modules. Today it is a complete system, available in 44 widths and 5 weights. The complete family counts 445 fonts, hundreds of thousands of glyphs, and zero contrast: Garaje is a typeface which is at the same time brutal and playful, rational and naïve. Garaje Monospace subfamily goes from 05015 (5 on 15 grid) to 3503 (35 on 3), and includes 215 fonts + 5 variable fonts. Its construction allows to compose in many sizes without changing the stem weight, and/or the pitch.
Available at 205TF.
Online specimen

  • 2011

  • Ici l’Onde

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  • 2011

  • Ici l’Onde

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For the identity of the festival Ici l’Onde, organised by Why Note in Dijon, I decided not to use any vectors or fonts, and use photography instead. The poster for the 2011 edition is the result of a complex setup, in which I sought to capture the reflection of the text on the water.

  • 2011

  • Émergences

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  • 2011

  • Émergences

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Poster of the 4th edition of the festival Émergences, a week dedicated to young creation in Besançon. Black + Gloss varnish. Selected in Chaumont design graphique festival.

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