Building Paris designs sleek and considered book for furniture designer Pierre Paulin

Furniture and interior designer Pierre Paulin had his heyday in the 60s and was an innovator who revolutionised everyday furniture. Well known for his sleek but comfortable chairs shaped like mushrooms, oysters, tongues and tulips his designs are still revered and adopted by creatives today. To celebrate his life’s work Building Paris was asked to design a new tome about him for Paris-based T&P Publishing.

“We wanted to design a ‘humble’ book in order to contrast with the big catalogue that was released for the exhibition on Pierre Paulin at the Centre Pompidou in Paris,” explains Benoît Santiard of Building Paris. “This influenced the size of the book and the choice to print it in black and white. We wanted a small and handy book that would suit and enhance the content.”

In the books are exclusive interviews with Paulin before his death in 2009, which provide an insight into his work, and there’s also essays by Catherine Geel on the designer’s influence. Unlike many design books where imagery seems key to the narrative, the studio opted for a more subtle approach. “We didn’t want to use any pictures because Paulin’s work is so well-known and we felt it would distract from the text-based content – but it was mostly because his drawings had such a strong impact on us,” says Benoît.

To try and capture the magic, the team asked Karl Nawrot to do some drawings specially for the book. “To us, it was the perfect match as we knew Karl would add something extra. He ended up spending a whole month doing paintings and became so into Paulin’s work that following this project he taught two workshops on his practice.” Karl’s paintings were made into a dust cover for the book, which in turns unfolds into a poster so they can all be viewed at once.

The typeface binds all the elements of the book together with beautiful block letters being used on the cover and to signpost sections in the book’s pages. “We used Eurostile for the titles, which was designed by Aldo Novsrese in 1962 and seemed to be a good way to convey futuristic ideas like Paulin was doing in his design,” says Benoît. “This typeface was designed when television was created and at the time of the space odyssey, it’s perfect historically, although Eurostile is no longer trendy in 2016!” For the text, Building Paris used Fleischmann by Erhard Kaiser, a redesign of an old Dutch Typeface. “It seemed perfect with the work Karl was doing in reference to the designer. On top of that we really love the shapes of the Fleischmann letters.”