Culture2024-05-28

Maximilien Vox, SNCF typographic standard, 1942.

Despite being developed during the Nazi occupation of France in 1942, Vox’s creation of a “typographic standard” for the SNCF aimed at saving paper amidst wartime shortages. The standard endured post-war and was later valued for its clarity and efficiency.

In 1936, the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean network published the “PLM typographic standard”, written and designed by Maximilien Vox and the PLM commercial propaganda department. The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF), absorbing all private companies, the largest of which was PLM, is incorporated as a national public company in 1937, under the aegis of the Front populaire. Vox designed the emblem and began typographic work unifying the various “propaganda” of the different rail networks.

In 1942, at the request of the French government under Marshal Pétain, Vox was asked to create a “typographic standard”, comprising general instructions for the presentation of all SNCF documents. As Vox puts it:

“It was no longer just a question of aesthetics and advertising, but of saving paper on all service printed matter.”

At the time, France was experiencing serious shortages due to the plundering of its economy by the occupying forces of Nazi Germany.

The standard was the subject of a brochure published in 1943. It states: “The SNCF is adopting a distinctive typographic style for all its printed matter... This style will be obtained by using as many typefaces as possible from the Antique and Egyptian (modern series) and Didot families”.

Strictly speaking, it’s not a charter or brand guide, but a set of recommendations and examples of applications intended for the diversity of printers in charge of these documents.

Vox praised his work in his contribution to Nouveaux destins de l'intelligence française, a luxurious book published in 1942, for which he was responsible for the layout and cover. He writes:

“The effort to renovate typography, which has been one of the healthiest features of the contemporary artistic movement, is in the process of achieving results of national importance, thanks to the overhaul of our institutions. At the request of the Marshal’s government, a body has been set up, the Office de rationalisation typographique, whose mission will be to give all printed matter of the French State a general style that satisfies elegance, logic and economy by reducing formats; following in this field the example set by the Railways: the S.N.C.F. will have been the first in our country to apply the rules of a typographic Standard adapted to the demands of our time. At a time when the mind is once again taking precedence over matter, the graphic arts are testifying to the vitality of our invention, our ingenuity and our will. Graphic design is first and foremost a language, and as far as I know, no one has said that the French language is close to having exhausted its virtues. In tomorrow's world, the nation that has succeeded in creating a style will have a great place.”

The desire to ”create a style” and rationalize the SNCF”s printed matter at a time when deportation and the sinister rail convoys leaving France for the Nazi camps were redoubling, and when the battle of the railways was beginning - sabotage of the rail network, installations and machines by the railwaymen themselves, and Allied air bombing – seemed like a sort of Bridge on the River Kwai syndrome.

Yet the standard survived the war, and in the 1950 issue of the magazine Caractère, edited by Vox, the “typographic standard” was presented in facsimile, and hailed as an example of rationalization: ”Between 1942 and the end of the war, more than 2,000 printed documents of all kinds — small parcel dispatch sheets, consignment notes, labels, letters of advice, not to mention regulations running to several hundred pages — changed format and appearance. Despite their reduced surface area, these printed documents became clearer and more legible... and the savings in paper costs were in the millions of tons... For the past seven years, the “typographic standard” has remained an invaluable auxiliary for all departments of the French Railways."