Antoine Audiau and Manuel Warosz set up their studio in 1993. Antoine had just completed a course of fashion design in a private studio and Manuel had just finished the course of industrial design in Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Décoratifs. Although they had been dealing with graphic design works and typographic rules in the 90s, it was in 2000s that their unique signature was confirmed: a sense of imagination, the ability to mingle capabilities (creating motifs for wallpaper, carpet or designing furniture). The result was that graphic design was not only an acting arena in an urban field, but one in private field. Their studio reflects the idea of ‘high fashion’ graphic design: a sense of tangible vision and an extreme taste for freedom.
Juggling with deluxe brands as well with cultural field codes, designing furniture and books, Antoine and Manuel played their roles respectively in instigating meticulousness and in magnifying the scope of graphic design in France. “We move from one work field to another in a natural way and without complexes; our investment is often out of proportion to the real demands in France.” One can observe the same energy in all their production whatever its dimension – a logo, a vase or a scenography– if the client provides them with the desirable room for maneuver. They said: “All we try to do is to provide each client with a mental world, a language; we do not intend to ‘communicate’.”
In 2002, Christian Lacroix asked them to redesign its corporate identity, and also to design its fashion shows’ invitations cards (for ready-to-wear and for haute couture as well). They designed for him ‘state of the art’ invitations cards made out of paper mixing all prining techniques such as embossing, laser cutting, screenprinting, etc. adding touches of impressionism and expressionism.
For Yvon Lambert, one of the most reknown contemporary art gallerist in France, they signed a personal visual identity for its museum – the Collection Lambert in Avignon. With just few posters, Antoine and Manuel disrupt contemporary art codes with simple compositions sketched with felt markers.
Since , Antoine and Manuel collaborate with the choreographer Emmanuelle Huynh who is also director of the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers. they designed an ‘organic’ and ‘flabby’ corporate identity. The logotype evokes the inner movements of the body fluids. Quickly they adapt those organic shapes in 3D with modeling paste. The duo sculpts letters, displays in small scale. At the end they produced 20 brochures, those enclosed spaces – given to the public – which became a real visual laboratory space.
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