“Le cinéma français c’est de la merde!”
A recommended purchase for any French cinema amateur or type connoisseur. Unfortunately only available in French.
Le cinéma français c’est de la merde (literally meaning “French cinema is shit”) is a book published by Distorsion to prove that there’s actually a lot of good French movies. Each of the 74 movies, ordered randomly, gets its own review and a picture or an original illustration.
The text is set in DIN Next Light Condensed which is a rather poor choice, especially cause most of the book is reversed type on dark background. But Clément Deneux, the designer of the book, spent most of his time working on the movie titles.
Most of the titles is brush lettering probably made by hand (as the book title on cover), and a few others are set in several styles of Knockout, which is also used for subheads and captions across the whole book.
But the core of the design is what might be the biggest display font collection ever used for a single book! This was probably made possible by renting via Fontstand, judging by the variety of typefaces and type foundries represented. I’ve scanned some of my favorite pages but basically, almost the whole book could be featured on Fonts In Use!
Other typefaces in the book from the Fontstand collection not listed on the right: Ohm (Haine, p.8), Acier (Mister Freedom, p.11), Anisette (Baxter, p.12), Thug Rough (Attila Marcel, p.22), Daisy (Les Disparus de Saint-Agil, p.59), History Pro 15 (L’Inhumain, p.60) & Pro 12 (Morgane & ses Nymphes, p.77), Plinc Banjo (Les Lèvres Rouges, p.97), Plinc Aztek (Martyrs, p.103), LTR Federal (L’Alpagueur, p.108), Gothiks Condensed (Demain les Momes, p.112), Aparo (Les filles de Malemort, p.154)… Some of them can be seen in the spread below or in this video.
The opening spread previews some movie titles from the book, displaying just a few typefaces from the huge collection contained in the book.
Origin Super Condensed Backslant helps create this unexpected layout.
Hobeaux Rococeaux is chill.
Title is set in Macula. Note that drop cap is actually Acier Noir. Macula is also used for La Balance on page 124.
Funny use of Bely Display with a tight spacing and a modified ‘I’.
Origin Super Condensed again!
Odesta, definitely not American but hey… that looks cool!
