Grignan – Typography and illustration: Our students testify

The return of 11 students in the 3rd year of the Bachelor still had the air of a holiday in the Provencal setting of Grignan where is located the House of the Printer colophon. Surrounded by a landscape of plains and mountains dominated by the Château de Grignan, our students discovered two ancient printing methods for a week: the typography and linocut. Accustomed to digital and its software, they left their comfort zone by confronting the manual. " All manual work allowed me to take a break with digital and also allowed me to know new ways of doing what will be after my studies, my job”, remembers Gustave Sanz from this unique experience.

In contact with "these machines from another era", describes Karine Testard, everyone had to show patience and rigor under the teachings of Yoan, typographer and printer at the Colophon workshop. “He taught us, with a lot of benevolence and patience, how to compose our sentences, find the right characters, then blend them and test them,” says Caroline Lambert.   

Leave with " a different vision ”

Everyone also remembers an intense stay but filled with solidarity and benevolence in the face of difficulties. “We had real group cohesion, which is very pleasant,” rejoices Louison Basset. Between walks in the member municipality of the Most Beautiful Villages of France and refreshing moments in the swimming pool of the lodging, our students come out with “a different vision” of their future profession, underlines Léa Gesset Parment. Entering "the world of printing and typography, its vocabulary, its specificities, its heritage and its points in common with our current methods", according to Altaïr Truphème, has enabled them to improve their "approach to composition, to learn to take into account the constraints of a technique but also its opportunities ”.