George Auriol
Encyclopedia
Beauvais
Beauvais is a city approximately by highway north of central Paris, in the northern French region of Picardie. It currently has a population of over 60,000 inhabitants.- History :...
(Oise
Oise
Oise is a department in the north of France. It is named after the river Oise.-History:Oise is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
) – February 1938, Paris), was a French poet, songwriter, graphic designer
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...
, type designer
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
, and Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
artist. He worked in many media and created illustrations for the covers of magazines, books, and sheet music, as well as other types of work such as monograms and trademarks.
Biography
After he arrived in Paris in 1883, Auriol was introduced to typography and book design by Eugène GrassetEugène Grasset
Eugène Samuel Grasset was a Swiss decorative artist who worked in Paris, France in a variety of creative design fields during the Belle Époque. He is considered a pioneer in Art Nouveau design.-Biography:...
and became particularly interested in the revival of historical type styles. He created his signature typeface Auriol
Auriol (typeface)
Auriol is a display typeface created by George Auriol in 1901 for the Deberny & Peignot foundry in Paris.George Auriol has been called the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer" according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili. The letterforms he designed for his namesake typeface originated in...
inspired by the Art Nouveau movement for the Deberny & Peignot
Deberny & Peignot
Deberny & Peignot was a French type foundry, created by the 1923 merger of Peignot foundry and the Laurent & Deberny foundry. It was bought by the Haas Type Foundry of Switzerland in 1972, which in turn was merged into D...
foundry, which was used in the work of Francis Thibaudeau
Francis Thibaudeau
Francis Thibaudeau was a French typographer and creater of the first well-established system for classifying typefaces, the Thibaudeau classification. He devised his system while developing the catalogues for the Renault & Marcou and Peignot & Cie foundries in the early 20th century...
and other publishers of the period. Auriol was a member of French bohemian culture, a denizen of the Chat Noir ("Black Cat Café") and long a friend of Erik Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
.
Auriol illustrated playbill
Playbill
Playbill is a monthly U.S. magazine for theatregoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most Playbills are printed for particular shows to be distributed at the door...
s for André Antoine
André Antoine (actor)
André Antoine was a French actor, theatre manager, film director, author, and critic who is considered the father of modern mise en scène in France.-Biography:...
's Théâtre Libre
Théâtre Libre
The Théâtre Libre was a theatre company that operated from 1887 to 1896 in the Montmartre district of Paris, France.-History:Théâtre Libre was founded on 30 March 1887 by André Antoine, who wanted to create a dramatization of an Émile Zola novel, Thérèse Raquin after the theater group for which he...
and for the Théâtre du Chat Noir ("Black Cat Theater") in the Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
district of Paris, one of which became a popular poster.
Typefaces
All fonts cast by Deberny & PeignotDeberny & Peignot
Deberny & Peignot was a French type foundry, created by the 1923 merger of Peignot foundry and the Laurent & Deberny foundry. It was bought by the Haas Type Foundry of Switzerland in 1972, which in turn was merged into D...
.
Works by George Auriol
- The Harpsichord of Yeddo. Prose poem. Appears in English in Specimens of the Forms of Discourse, compiled and edited by E.H. Lewis (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1900), p. 45.
- Le Premier Livre des cachets, marques, et monogrammes dessinés (Paris: Libraire Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1901).
- Les Trente-six Vues de la Tour Eiffel, illustrations by Henri Rivière, prologue by Arsène Alexandre (Paris: Imprimerie Eugène Verneau, 1902). George Auriol: typography, layout, & design.
External links
- Typographie & Civilisation: George Auriol & l'écriture typographique, biography, illustration & typography (French)