The Musée des Arts Décoratifs has one of the most comprehensive and oldest graphic design collections in France. Yet since 2009 and the Antoine + Manuel exhibition, the collection has been primarily enhanced with works donated by the designers themselves. More than seven hundred new items join the collection each year.

These recent additions have enabled us to make a selection of three hundred works painting a portrait of graphic universes as widely differing as those of Frédéric Teschner, Pierre di Sciullo, Les Graphiquants, Jocelyn Cottencin, M/M (Paris), deValence, Fanette Mellier, Change is good, Irma Boom, H5 and Yorgo Tloupas. They give an idea of the diversity of the fields in which graphic design plays such a key role and show how experimentation and hybridization are always responses to the constraints imposed by the client.

The exhibition focuses on nine themes illustrating graphic design’s different fields of application : The performing arts and particularly the theatre, both forcing graphic designers to reflect on narration, dance and contemporary art with their more conceptual codes, and also music and fashion, self-production, books, typography and visual identity. These typologies show the evolution of a discipline and profession, its clients and mediums.