Opening of the Bureau des affaires typographiques, first French type design company on the internet.
The Bureau des affaires typographiques (B.A.T) is a company founded by four young graphic- and type designers. Based in Paris, it aims at fostering innovative and quality French typography throughout the world. The website will open on April, 26th, while a video reel is already available on the internet.
Since 2009, Bruno Bernard, Stéphane Buellet, Jean-Baptiste Levée and Patrick Paleta secretly work on the creation of what is now the first French type design and distribution company since the 1980s.
These four freelance graphic- and type designers got together in founding a Limited Liability Company aimed at promoting their own typeface designs along with the ones of other French type designers’ (or designers whose works bear a certain French spirit.) Thus, the BAT is a collective project, based upon the will of merging energies and strugging against the scattering of type designers and their tendancy, for a few years, to isolate into one-person businesses.
The BAT ambitions the gathering ot the finest creative French type design, whether it comes from young talents or confirmed artists.
Since the 1990s, France is indeed in the middle of a typeface design renewal. For thirty years, foundries have not ceased to close their doors, amongst them Deberny-Peignot (1974), Olive (1976), Hollenstein or TypoGabor (1989) ; and there has not been one collective structure to ensure visibility on the international type design scene. The BAT has been created to respawn this visibility and to defend its know-how and specificities.
