Culture2024-05-21

Deberny et Peignot, “Film” by Jacno, 1933

“Film” became a fashionable choice for advertising and magazine titles. It remains Jacno’s only notable sans-serif typeface, and led to a sporadic yet long collaboration with the publishing foundry.

“Film” is the first typeface published by Jacno, in 1933, by the Deberny et Peignot foundry. Until the Second World War, it was one of the most fashionable fantaisie face in advertising and in the titles of magazines which wanted to renew their models in a modernist register. Playing on the effect of white typography (open) shaded in black on a raster background, it presents shapes and proportions quite close to Europe, with which it will be associated in several specimens from the Deberny et Peignot foundry.

In the journal Arts et Métiers Graphiques (nº38, November 15, 1933, pp 45-46), Marcel Jacno commented on the development of Film in these terms.

“Until then we had considered the shaded letter half seen from below, half from the side, which gave the illusion that it was suspended at eye level, or leaning back. I removed the bottom to obtain two appreciable results at the same time: a) simplification of the contour of the shadow, rejuvenation of the physiognomy; b) without losing its relief, the letter finally seemed to rest on its base. The first difficulty then arises: a series of letters, in which the horizontal parts were no longer delimited by the shadows below, remained legible. I tried to surround the letter with a background which, by contrast, revealed all the blanks. This solution brought something new: the word created in this way seemed to have come in one piece. All that remained was to choose a type of engraving to represent the gray. I chose a grid of dots, which had to be dark enough to contrast with the whites, but light enough to contrast with the blacks. It had to be able to slip into the smallest nooks and crannies to completely delineate the white spaces. It had to be arranged around each of the fifty-three letters and signs in such a way that they could always connect to each other either directly or through frames. With a dotted size particularly suited to each of the six bodies of the scale adopted, it was however necessary that the six frames all seemed to be of the same color. Despite appearances, it is impossible to use a mechanical frame with the appropriate number for each body. On the contrary, it was necessary to draw point by point an entirely calculated framework. All defective connections were finally avoided. It was enough to find the following rule: the width of each element (letter, sign, etc.) calculated in vertical dotted lines, must always have a number of lines that are a multiple of three minus one, to be able to connect without exception in each of the multiple combinations possible. We have a hard time representing this patient work when we see this shaded letter. The “monobloc” aspect of the compound word can, however, make one suspect something.”

Film will have no posterity and remains the only successful foray of its creator into the field of sans-serif face. It led to a long collaboration with Deberny and Peignot, not without eclipses.