Let Letters Speak - Summer School with Naïma Ben Ayed at Le Signe

About ‘Let Letters Speak’ Naïma Ben Ayed is leading the summer school Faire Parler les Lettres (Let Letters Speak) at le Signe in Chaumont, France from 14 to 18 July – as part of the Biennale internationale de design graphique 2021. In Naïma’s words: ‘Letterforms are not neutral. They convey (hi)stories and cultures. This workshop is located at the intersection between language and letterforms.

The French language contains many words of foreign origin, namely words that come from writing systems other than Latin, such as Arabic or Greek. What are these words’ itineraries? How did they get into the French language, from one alphabet to another one?

We will investigate these questions through letterform design.

Each participant will create a digital lettering in Latin letters starting from a word chosen from a different language/ writing system.*

This workshop is an invitation to experiment with the notion of typographic matchmaking, i.e. the visual harmonisation of different writing systems.

All of these created letterings will become one page of a collective booklet printed by risograph and a series of posters.’

Stay posted to see what we make during this time together in Chaumont!