alexis.jeuffrain
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● Identity · Theatre

Garance

A theatre identity, sewn stitch by stitch. Identity for La Garance, the national theatre of Cavaillon. Garance is the French word for madder, the plant whose root dyes cloth red, so every letter is drawn in stitches.

Client
School brief, ECV Aix-en-Provence
Role
Identity and motion
Subject
La Garance, Scène nationale de Cavaillon
With
Noémie Martin
Deliverables
Lettering, posters with tear-off tickets, social announcement
Years
2016
Status
Student project
The word garance drawn in short white strokes on madder red

From the name to the stitch

  1. 01The name

    Garance is the French word for madder, a plant whose root gives a red dye for cloth. The theatre is named after a colour that belongs to textile.

  2. 02The stitch

    So the identity is sewn. Every letter is built from short strokes with round ends, like the part of a thread that shows on the cloth.

  3. 03The colour

    One red, on white, and nothing else.

The rule

Three rules, measured on the drawings.

Across the mark and the two poster titles, 174 strokes share one weight and never touch. Almost all of them follow three directions; the v, the s and the accents step outside.

Two thick red strokes in a row with a gap between them, labelled over, under, over.
One weight, round ends. The thread shows, then hides.
Three white strokes on red, pointing up and thirty degrees either side of level.
Upright, and thirty degrees either side of level.
The letter s built from five separate strokes, the gaps between them circled.
A gap at every meeting point.
Twenty letters drawn in red strokes, one per cell of a dashed grid.
Twenty letters, drawn as the titles called for them. It is a lettering, not a typeface.

Posters

A poster that gives its tickets away.

Each show gets a poster. Its lower third is a sheet of tickets: the title, the date and the company, repeated sixteen times, each one cut out along a stitched line.

Information sits in two kinds of frame: crosses for when, arrows for what and who. The companion typeface is OCR-A, a face designed to be read by machines, set against lettering that looks made by hand.

Two posters side by side, each with a large title in red strokes, a date block, a photograph and two rows of tickets at the foot.
The foot of a poster with its rows of tickets; one ticket has been taken and lies beside it.
The foot of the poster, one ticket taken.
The two tickets on a red background, each with the title of the show, its date, time and company.
The two tickets, turned to be read.

In motion

The announcement, sewn in front of you.

The brief asked how a show would be announced on social networks. The title arrives one word at a time, and every word is made from the strokes of the one before: they turn and slide like needles. The photograph opens in bands, the date and the hour roll into place, then the strokes of the title gather into the mark.

The lettering, posters and tickets are the 2016 work, redrawn in vector. The animation was rebuilt in 2026 on the same rules.

Brûlent nos cœurs insoumis. Fifteen seconds in a loop, 16:9, embroidered on cloth.
Les règles du savoir vivre. The same system with a five-word title and a wider photograph.