Ludovic Balland

Awarded

Ludovic Balland

‘StadtKino Basel' and ‘Teaching Architecture', two graphic design projects

Graphic Design

Jury report

Beautifully Headstrong
Every­one liv­ing in Basle knows them, the posters and the pro­gramme guides by Lu­dovic Bal­land. Since 2007, they have adorned the ad­ver­tis­ing pil­lars in the Basle city space, and they are avail­able in nu­mer­ous cafes and cin­e­mas. Month after month, a new poster, al­ways adopt­ing the same de­sign prin­ci­ple, an­nounces to passers-by and cin­ema goers two new theme-based se­ries of cult films show­ing at the city cin­ema.
El­e­ments such as black-and-white film stills and head­lines from news­pa­pers of the 1950s are, to­gether with a con­spic­u­ous lay­out of the ty­pog­ra­phy, com­bined into an aes­thetic unity, thereby invit­ing view­ers to im­merse them­selves in the world of film. The pro­gramme guide fol­lows the same style. A spe­cial fea­ture of the guide is its prac­ti­cal tear-off cal­en­dar which fits into any hand­bag. By com­bin­ing two tried and tested media, en­sur­ing high-qual­ity work, and pre­sent­ing his own in­de­pen­dent aes­thetic, Lu­dovic Bal­land pro­motes the whole spec­trum of film clas­sics rang­ing from François Truf­faut to Lucchino Vis­conti and Jim Jar­musch.
'Teach­ing Ar­chi­tec­ture. 3 Po­si­tions Made in Switzer­land' is the title of the sec­ond pro­ject that Lu­dovic Bal­land has sub­mit­ted for the Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Award. This pub­li­ca­tion pro­ject – con­sist­ing of three cat­a­logues and posters for ex­hi­bi­tions which were shown at the Ar­chi­tec­ture Bi­en­nale 2010 in Venice – is very at­trac­tive on ac­count of Bal­land's idio­syn­cratic hand­writ­ing: the pre­sen­ta­tion of, in some cases, hard-to-de­scribe is­sues re­lat­ing to the teach­ing of ar­chi­tec­ture is au­da­cious and strik­ing in its colour choice and nev­er­the­less co­her­ent. For his small-for­mat books, Lu­dovic Bal­land this year re­ceived an hon­orary diploma as part of the Most Beau­ti­ful Books of the World Awards.
Both pro­jects by the graphic de­signer put a suc­cinct ty­pog­ra­phy at the cen­tre of their de­sign con­cept: the stan­dard­ised lay­out sup­ports and re­in­forces the se­r­ial qual­ity of the posters, mag­a­zines and pub­li­ca­tions.
Petra Bäni

Biography

Ludovic Balland
Born in
1973
Education
Graphic designer

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