Prince by Gerald Petit

Contributed by Alex Chavot on Nov 6th, 2022. Artwork published in

circa April 2022

Prince by Gerald Petit 1 — **Source: studio.cataloguegeneral.fr** Catalogue Général. License: All Rights Reserved.

Since 2019, Catalogue Général (Jean-Marie Courant & Marie Proyart) have been designing the books of the “Icônes” series, directed by Jean Cléder and Emmanuel Tibloux and published by Éditions Les Pérégrines. Ten volumes have been released so far, each with a specific typographic treatment for the titles on the front cover.

Introduced to music by his father, a pianist, and his mother, a jazz singer, Prince was a precocious musician. A talented multi-instrumentalist, he landed a contract at the age of eighteen to become a songwriter, composer, performer and producer in his own right. A real workaholic, he quickly became a major musician and singer who turned the music industry upside down.

Fascinated by his charisma and his genius, Gerald Petit retraces the construction of this prodigious destiny and takes us along in the wake of this artist who never ceases to surpass himself and multiplies his wanderings between a public confirming his aura and a critic sceptical by dint of his unpredictability.

Gerald Petit offers a fine analysis of the strategy of conquest of this beast of the stage who, relentless businessman by day and creative machine by night, is constantly on the lookout and never misses an opportunity to perform.

Prince was published by Éditions Les Pérégrines in April 2022. The book has 156 pages and measures 120×192 mm. Kellar (Apex Type Foundry) is paired with Adobe Caslon (Carol Twombly).

**Source: editionslesperegrines.fr** License: All Rights Reserved.

Title page

**Source: editionslesperegrines.fr** License: All Rights Reserved.

Interior spread

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1 Comment on “Prince by Gerald Petit”

Florian Hardwig says:
Nov 6th, 2022 3:02 pm

Thank you, Alex!

On their Instagram, Jean-Marie Courant & Marie Proyart make some interesting notes on the design choices:

We imagined dressing this collection in a fairly classic outfit, a combination of references borrowed from the history of publishing – from the Suhrkamp Taschenbuch designed by Willy Fleckhaus, to the “Bibliothèque de la Pléiades”, including the “Quadrige” series in its original design from the 80s, or the “Poésies/Gallimard” series designed by Massin – which all perpetuate the editorial genre “cover with portrait of the great man (who is rarely a woman) in vignette”. To update this genre, we trouble it with a fairly open typographic casting and a range of color that is both pale and tangy, delicately pop. We also proposed for the back cover, a “sommaire arrangé”, which takes up the titles of the chapters while making some more concise, in order to create this sort of indecisive portrait, and which, once the capitals have been removed, looks like to a short poem.

The typeface used in the inside pages is characterized by its beautiful uniformity, a kind of introversion, which it certainly comes from having avoided effects and excesses, and which connects it, it seems to us, to this idea of “Le Neutre” [neutral] dear to Roland Barthes. This reserve offers a beautiful counterpoint to the typographical parade of the titles.

It should be remembered that this typeface, Adobe Caslon, is signed by a woman, Carol Twombly, which was not very common in 1990, when it was released.