In 1956 the designer Eliot Noyes was employed by the Director of IBM to rethink the company’s design as a whole, from products to communication right up to the architecture of the buildings.

Graphic Designer Paul Rand was invited to define all of the graphic documents used in the company. Thus began one of the most memorable graphic design projects of the 20th century, at the heart of the “IBM Graphic Design Program”.

The series of IBM logotypes created by Paul Rand culminated in 1972 in a drawn version made up of layered strips, making the company’s initials instantly recognisable all over the world. This iconic logo, composed of 8 bars, continues to be used today.

Between the sixties and the eighties a significant group of graphic rules and uses was documented and regularly updated in a folder that was organised into sections. Inside we can find the instructions that allow us to reproduce the logotype, graphic and typographic rules, designs for internal and external documents, signage and architectural applications. This document allows one to work with the company’s graphic signs in coherence and efficient discussion with other trades. Today this folder is an iconic, rare and little documented object and it seems important to us to render it accessible and distributable, to Graphic designers, students and anyone interested in the adventure undertaken by this emblematic company.

Considering the many updates that were made to graphic design standards and norms, the different folders of the IBM norm that we consulted often differed greatly in terms of their content.

The successive documents from the folder and their developments will be published and reproduced so as to offer the widest possible vision of the work accomplished over a period of more than twenty years. This work will be done in collaboration with the archive team from IBM New York, and the Kandinsky Library of the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris.

The project is being undertaken with the approval of the legal successors of Paul Rand and IBM itself.

The exhibition catalogue for the Château d’Oiron presents more than 170 artworks from the collection of Antoine de Galbert, placed in such a way as to dialogue with the permanent collection of contemporary art Curios & Mirabilia, assembled by the same Jean-Hubert Martin in 1993. The collection of Antoine de Galbert is deployed in exhibition galleries according to themes inherent to it, with great importance being attached to the eye, the face and its expressions, and to injuries. The confrontation of these two collections and the dialogue established between the two men give rise to new effects of surprise in the catalogue thanks to collages that are as frontal as they are playful. The catalogue displays all of the artworks presented in the space, including From here to ear by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot whose music can be heard within these 16th century walls. A number of artists are featured in both collections: Hubert Duprat, Markus Raetz, Wim Delvoye, Annette Messager, Christian Boltanski, Marina Abramovic, Bertrand Lavier, Nicolas Darrot… Others have onlyrecently entered Oiron: Théo Mercier, Gilles Barbier, Stéphane Thidet, Barthélémy Toguo, Jackie Kayser, Steven Cohen