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.

Co-Creation is a multifaceted publication that is part of a research initiative into co-creation and socially engaged art practices. Begun in 2013, this long-term initiative has been the work of Céline Poulin (the director of CAC Brétigny) and Marie Preston (artist and teacher-researcher at Université Paris 8), along with Stéphanie Airaud (the director of public outreach and cultural initiatives at MAC VAL). The publication took shape in part around a three-day symposium at MAC VAL and CAC Brétigny, a master’s seminar in Contemporary Art Media Design of Université Paris 8 at Villa Vassilieff, and finally an exhibition at CAC Brétigny.
A new theoretical advance and not simply the proceedings of a symposium, Co-Creation has allowed us to bring together and get out to the public, in France and abroad, the contributions this research project has inspired. No comparable reference work existed in France before the present publication. This book allows us to pursue a dialogue with all those who are contributing internationally to such reflections. It records the development of collective work that is helping to connect French and international universities, art centres, museums, art schools, etc. Different questions raised by co-creation practices and dealt with in earlier iterations are returned to or are treated in greater depth as new ones emerge. What, for example, is the heritage of popular education in co-creation practices? Who is speaking when more than one is in fact speaking? What is at stake in terms of power and statuses in a group that is working together? What kind of private connections and what kind of relationship to daily reality does that involve? What interactions exist between alternative educational methods and co-creation practices? What methodologies of evaluation, aesthetic or not, are possible?
Made up of theoretical and/or personal texts by philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, artists, and art historians, along with several interviews, this edition is organised around five essential cross-disciplinary themes, namely, conversation, the collective, education, vulnerability, and evaluation.

Editors: Céline Poulin & Marie Preston with the participation of Stéphanie Airaud
Texts: Stéphanie Airaud, Andrea Ancira, Marnie Badham, Virginie Bobin, Caroline Darroux, François Deck, Marie Fraser, Véronique Goudinoux, Núria Güell, Adelita Husni-Bey, Florence Jou, Grant H. Kester, Camille Louis, Pascal Nicolas-Le Strat, Maude Mandart, Christian Maurel, Céline Poulin, Marie Preston, Katia Schneller, Myriam Suchet, Mathilde Villeneuve.