Culture
Words by Michel Wlassikoff
Deberny et Peignot’s “Contact”
“In Switzerland, Imre Reiner draws initials, drop caps and monograms inspired by all the wealth of invention, construction and writing of manuscripts, old and recent characters, pen strokes, brush and pencil of the masters of the avantgarde or folklore artists. Blackletter Initials and the Civilité types, flower letters of romanticism: embroidery, festoons, fireworks; hopscotch and domino games, spider webs and fans, mosaics and tiles. Pointed, retorted, potbellied letters; watermarked, riddled, speckled, highlighted or shaded. Automatic writing, maze calligraphy.”
Louis Ferrand, “Les tendances typographiques”, Le Courrier Graphique, nº86, 1956.
Contact, published in 1952, marks the return of Imre Reiner to the fold of the Deberny and Peignot foundry, his previous typeface for this foundry, Floride, dating from 1938. Unlike Reiner’s experimentation in the field of letter drawing, numerous in the 1950s (see above), Contact turns out to be the most sober, although it can be categorized as a painted script with a brush. It enjoyed a certain notoriety in his time, in the lineage of Jacno, which in a certain way it could complete.
