Avoir identity and website

Avoir is an interdisciplinary design and production office based in Paris, whose field of action ranges from product design to architecture, shows, set design and more. Their clients include brands such as Colette, Kenzo, Marine Serre, but also the French rap duo PNL for their clothing brand Que la Famille. Avoir is the French word for “to have”: the statement of the studio is that avoir is the word that defines best our contemporary relationship to the material world, as much in terms of possession as in termes of feelings or experiences.

Based on this assertion, the identity for Avoir conceived by Jules Banide together with Tristan Bagot invests the potential of barcodes as ultimate logotype: hyper-identifiable, always identical yet at the same time always different, and of course, applied to whatever may be considered as a product, and thus, whatever can be possessed. That’s why Avoir as an agency has its own barcode. And for each of their works a new barcode is generated in real-time, adding up to the database of works. This leads to an indexical approach of their website, where hovering over an item immediately displays the reference and barcode associated with each project. The identity is supported by a radical typographic treatment: Media Sans Black from Production Type is used only for the logotype, in order to differentiate the office from their productions. The core typography uses Eurostile in caps only and mostly in a small size, in reference to technical leaflets and catalogue aesthetics. While Eurostile takes us to a world of lists and properties, Media Sans brings more sensibility to the bold caps. It seems to take up the aspect of avoir related to how we experience the world: the slight calligraphic touch that we find in the typeface’s contrasts – similar to Excoffon’s Antique Olive – remind us of the human gaze behind all production.