Duvillé’s “L’art du tracé rationnel de la lettre”, 1934–1947

A first edition of Duvillé’s L’art du tracé rationnel de la lettre appeared in the early 1930s. A new edition “augmented with twenty plates and ornate letters” was published in 1934. Finally, in 1947, the previous edition was reprinted. A professor of applied design and advertising at Paris art schools, as he calls himself, the author, who has not achieved great renown, indicates that his search for a rational method of letter design began in 1919. A good ten years later, he produced the work that constitutes his masterpiece. He points out that, in the meantime, he had become acquainted with the precepts of Geoffroy Tory, published in his Champfleury, and those of Paccioli and Leonardo revealed in Divine Proportion. These discoveries reinforced his choices and his method. It should be noted that this publication was part of a renewed enthusiasm for this type of work at the turn of the 1930s. Vox’s Divertissements typographiques for Deberny et Peignot had already made their mark, and the impressive Alphabets collection, published by Arts et métiers graphiques, made its mark on typographers of the time

See document : Alphabets, published by Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1930

. In the same vein, in 1930-1931, various publishers published La Lettre Artistique Moderne, Modèles de Lettres Modernes and Vignettes et Lettres Modernes, all of which can be found on this site. Like this one, they were all aimed at “advertising designers, lithographers, punchcutters, decorators and architects”.

Luc Devroye states on his website that several recent digital types are directly inspired by Duvillé’s proposals: Nick Curtis’s Retrorocket NF and Julie Patat’s Wolf, both published in 2015.

Document: D. Duvillé, L’art du tracé rationnel de la lettre, Société Française d’Éditions Littéraires et Techniques, Paris, 1930, reed. 1947.

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