La Maison du Whisky website

Imagine it’s a hot summer night and all you have at hand is tab water. The two things to soothe you are thoughts of the Scottish weather and the sparkling refreshment one can find in French all-caps typesetting.

La Maison du Whisky is not just another spirits vendor, it is the French pioneer with regards to importing those liquors this beautiful country does not produce itself. It all started in the mid 1950s with single malt whisky from Scotland and meanwhile turned into an empire spanning the globe. Inside France LMDW distributes to bars, restaurants, and liquor stores. Retailing is realized through four points of sale in Paris and the website that you can see here.

What is so French about its design is the extensive use of all-caps typesetting, very much aligned with the national tradition. What makes it delightful and elegant is the wide letterspacing — that simple trick so little understood in many other countries.

The website uses three distinct typefaces. The monolinear sans-serif is Futura, here ParaType’s digital revival, and represented by the Book and Medium cuts. As much of modernist inspiration is Acier, the display type used for the rum selection. Originally designed as a dual-color typeface by Cassandre and released in 1930 by Deberny & Peignot, it was digitally revived by Production Type’s Jean-Baptiste Levée in 2010.

The third typeface, the one most of the headlines are set in, is Granville, Light and Regular, equally designed by Jean-Baptiste Levée and released by Production Type in 2015. Granville is a grotesque with notable stroke contrast, rational but not constructivist, thus referring to an earlier stage of the sans-serif category. Typeset in all caps with airy spacing, it conveys style and joie de vivre.

Tchin-tchin !