Le Petit Bonneuillois

In 2021, at the end of the Covid restrictions, part of the team at the École Expérimentale de Bonneuil (France) decided to launch a Journal workshop. This is a special school, which makes this journal special, too. It was founded in 1969 by psychoanalyst Maud Mannoni as a home for children and adolescents (commonly referred to as les jeunes [“the young people”]) with autism, psychosis or severe neurosis. Today, it has the status of a day hospital, where the living environment, exchanges and psychoanalytical thought structure the establishment. During this workshop, the youngsters investigate and write in depth, as journalists, in order to publish a monthly newspaper.

The team often calls on the outside world (i.e., outside the institution and outside the profession) to establish a dialogue with these young people and enable them to position themselves alongside others.

The name chosen by the workshop team for this newspaper, Le Petit Bonneuillois, dictated a strong graphic axis and a very condensed typographic style. Firstly, to maintain a high visibility, and secondly, to echo the headlines and front pages of newspapers, where typography is as eye-catching as possible. In this spirit of reference to the daily press, I designed a header which mixes very bold, straight condensed letters with round, almost geometric shapes for certain letters. In this way, the emphasis is on “Bonneuillois” and less on “Le Petit”. To complete the musical rhythm and add a touch of softness, the i’s are treated as lowercase letters, revealing little people for all to see. The rounded counterforms accompany this softness, imitating ink that would have smudged on the paper, as might have been the case with newsprint.

A true point of departure, everything stems from this typographic block, which was then developed into a typeface, Bonzom. The layout is joyful, colorful and airy, while retaining the solid structure of a daily newspaper, with the use of Mário Feliciano’s Sebenta (in bold and regular weights plus italics) and its gentle mechanical rhythm.

The project lasted a year, with the publication of several newspapers and special magazines. You can read more about the process, the collaboration with the teams and les jeunes, and the graphic codes on the project page of my website (in French).