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OSP-foundry :: Publi Fluor

Publi Fluor

Publi Fluor is a digital reinterpretation of a set of adhesive letters.

The Publi Fluor shop was situated in the northern part of Brussels, Schaerbeek, and founded by the father of Madame Christelle Crickx who was a trained letter painter. In his day he is—it seems—the first to propose fluorescent colors for shopwindow signs. It proves so difficult to paint letters on site with that kind of unstable coating that he develops a technique based on vinyl that he fluo-colors and cuts by hand in the workplace, then sticks at clients shops. Around 1975, his health degrades quickly and his daughter is forced to step into the business.

Starting to cut letters with the rounded and skilled cardboard templates drawn by her father, Madame Crickx slowly morphs the shapes by analysing how typographic niceties confuse her non-trained clients and leads to bad letters placement. She progressively removes the optical compensation of rounded tops and bottoms, straightens sides, and attaches accents for less floating parts. Those moves add a very specific orientation to this otherwise quite common bold italic sans serif display typeface.

During about fifty years these craft lettres have spread across the windows of shopping streets, more and more, and after the closure of the shop in the early noughties, they seem to still hold their own to the assaults of vector vinyl cutting technology.

In 1996, Pierre Huyghebaert and Vincent Fortemps have just started to work for the cultural center les Halles de Schaerbeek. For a series of events linked to India, an interest to mix local and distant vernacular takes shape. Those letters spotted on Schaerbeek’s shopwindows years before seem to fit the job ideally. After a few wanderings in the streets nearby, the small lettershop at the bottom of the dull Avenue Rogier, shining with its fluo shapes, is finally spotted as the origin of these typographic waves… And the inside of the shop proves to be even more amazing.

First contacts with Madame Crickx follow, the first poster is typeset letter by letter, then Pierre Huyghebaert pays other visits and it becomes obvious that these letters deserve more than a one-time usage, as Madame Crickx’s work deserves more than simply buying some letters more. For the following Halles assignments, after a quick-and-dirty Fontographer vectorisation, the Crickx font is heavily used. This font is called the Crickx Rush in reference of the time constrains that characterize this kind of operation. When Jan Middendorp, then Editor of the Belgian fontshop magazine Druk, orders an article on the letters, it is the occasion for Pierre to try to investigate and understand better the process described herebefore. (Astonishingly, shortly before the magazine stops, a poll seems to have elected the article as one of the most favoured by the readers…).

When Madame Crickx follows the retirement of her postman husband, the studio Speculoos (where Pierre works) buys the whole stock of letters and dingbats and vinyle for a symbolic prize, stores it in their basement of Saint-Gilles but uses it for some of their funkiest windowshop displays. He ask Madame Crickx to cut lower-cases for her letters as with other accented and diacritics to cover more or less the Latin-1 codepage, by trying to give her just enough sample to distinguish the characters but not much to influence the way to draw them. As answers, she cut a completely new and fantasy set of letters (called the blobby in the pack)… After a discussion, she propose new lower-case, more in sync with the upper cases classical ones, but not sharing exactly the same low contrast. After years of sleeping on hard-drive and archives, in 2010, Ludi Loiseau and Antoine Begon uplift the work to redraw the outlines to produce a more complete and less trashy version (Regular), explore the non-italic more rare one (Droite Rush and Droite) and extend it with lower cases (SharkCut). Finally, the Crickx’s cabinet regains a better place at the new Constant Variable place, Rue Gallait 80, less than a kilometer far from the original shop place…

In 2017, on Sophie's initiative, the archive is relocated in Spec uloos' (renamed with spacing inserted between the two parts of the name) new office space, 47 Rue Van Elewyck, Ixelles.

2020 "Un Futur pour la Culture," a call for projects, is launched by the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (a.k.a the Brussels French Community). Surface Utiles editions grab this opportunity to fund a project that could lead to a publication on the Publi Fluor archive.

The research will be carried out over four years.

In April 2024, Publi Fluor was launched. This non-standard collective essay attempts to tell the life of a type model, its successive authors and their tools, all while broadening the field and exploring the interstices between the many stories that Chrystel Crickx’s practice gave rise to. At the same time, the digital font is republished under the name Publi Fluor.

More :

Visit the research associated with the history of these letters, via the extracts published on the website and by leafing through the specimen publication.

This non-standard collective essay attempts to tell the life of a type model, its successive authors and their tools, all while broadening the field and exploring the interstices between the many stories that Chrystel Crickx’s practice gave rise to.

PDF of an article of 1999 in Dutch (translated by Jan Middendorp and French (original).

Text by Femke Snelting

Small article in Médor magazine

We are very happy to receive news from what you do or works you spot that use these fonts!
On est très heureux de recevoir des infos à propos de travaux que vous réalisez ou que vous remarquez qui utilisent ces fontes!


Version française : Publi Fluor est une réinterprétation numérique d'un ensemble de lettres adhésives.

La boutique Publi Fluor était située dans la partie nord de Bruxelles, Schaerbeek, et fondée par le père de Madame Christelle Crickx, peintre en lettres. De son temps, il est, semble-t-il, le premier à proposer des couleurs fluorescentes pour les enseignes de vitrines. Il s'avère si difficile de lettre sur site avec ce type de revêtement instable qu'il développe une technique basée sur le vinyle qu'il colore et découpe à la main sur le lieu de travail, puis colle dans les magasins des clients. Vers 1975, sa santé se dégrade rapidement et sa fille est obligée de reprendre l'entreprise au pied levé.

Commençant à découper les lettres avec les gabarits en carton des lettrages arrondis et habiles dessinés par son père, Madame Crickx transforme lentement ces formes en analysant comment les subtilités typographiques désorientent ses clients non formés et et les amènent vers un mauvais placement des lettres. Elle supprime progressivement les compensations optiques des pointes et des fonds arrondis, redresse les côtés et attache des accents pour proposer moins de parties flottantes. Ces glissements donnent une orientation très spécifique à cette police de caractères italiques gras sans empattement.

Pendant une cinquantaine d'années, ces lettres artisanales se répendent à travers les vitrines des rues commerçantes. Et après la fermeture de la boutique à la fin des années 90, elles semblent toujours résister aux assauts de la technologie vectorielle de découpe de vinyle.

En 1996, Pierre Huyghebaert et Vincent Fortemps viennent de commencer à travailler pour le centre culturel les Halles de Schaerbeek. Pour une série d'événements liés à l'Inde, l'intérêt de mélanger le local et le vernaculaire lointain prend forme. Ces lettres repérées sur les vitrines de Schaerbeek des années auparavant semblent correspondre idéalement. Après une série de maraudes en rond dans l'eau dans les rues avoisinantes, le petit magasin de lettres au bas de l'avenue Rogier, vibrant de ses couleurs fluo, est enfin repéré comme origine de ces ondes typographiques.... Et l'intérieur de la boutique s'avère encore plus étonnant.

Les premiers contacts avec Madame Crickx suivent, la première affiche est composée lettre par lettre, puis Pierre Huyghebaert fait d'autres visites et il devient évident que ces lettres méritent plus qu'un usage unique, et que le travail de Madame Crickx mérite plus qu'un simple achat de lettres. Pour les commandes suivantes, après une vectorisation rapide et sale en Fontographer, la police Crickx est fortement utilisée. Elle est appelée Crickx Rush en référence aux contraintes de temps qui caractérisent ce type d'opération. Lorsque Jan Middendorp, alors rédacteur en chef du magazine belge Druk, commande un article à propos de ce lettrage atypique, c'est l'occasion pour Pierre d'essayer d'enquêter et de mieux comprendre le processus décrit précédemment. (Étonnamment, peu avant l'arrêt du magazine, un sondage semble avoir élu l'article comme l'un des plus appréciés des lecteurs...).

Lorsque Madame Crickx suit le départ à la retraite de son mari facteur, l'atelier Speculoos (où travaille Pierre) achète tout le stock de lettres et de dingbats et de vinyle pour un prix symbolique et surtout en éviter la destruction, le stocke dans leur sous-sol de Saint-Gilles mais l'utilise pour certaines de leurs vitrines les plus funky. Il demande à Madame Crickx de couper les minuscules pour ses lettres comme pour les autres accents et diacritiques pour couvrir plus ou moins le codepage latin-1, en essayant de lui donner juste assez d'échantillons visuels que pour distinguer les caractères mais pas trop pour éviter d'influencer la façon de les dessiner. En guise de réponse, elle découpe un jeu de lettres complètement nouveau et fantastique (appelé le Blobby dans le pack).... Après une discussion, elle propose de nouvelles minuscules, plus synchronisées avec les majuscules classiques, mais ne partageant pas exactement le même faible contraste. Après des années de sommeil sur disque dur et archives vinyle, en 2010, Ludi Loiseau et Antoine Begon d'Open source Publishing s'attaque au travail de redessiner les contours pour produire une version plus complète et moins trash (Regular), explorer la version non italique plus rare (Droite Rush et Droite) et l'étendre avec des minuscules (SharkCut). Enfin, l'armoire du Crickx retrouve une meilleure place dans l'immeuble Variable où OSP a son studio, Rue Gallait 80, à moins d'un kilomètre du magasin d'origine... Puis elle suit le déménagement de la caravane vers le 25e étage de la tour WTC, là encore en restant proche de son point d'origine.

En 2017, à l’initiative de Sophie, rapatriement de l’archive vers les nouveaux locaux de Spec uloos (renommé avec insertion d’une espace entre les deux parties du nom), rue Van Elewyck 47 à Ixelles.

2020, un Futur pour la Culture, appel à projet lancé par la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (autre nom de la Communauté française). Les éditions Surfaces Utiles y voient l’opportunité de financer la recherche qui pourrait alimenter la publication d’un livre autour de l’archive Publi Fluor.

La recherche s'étendra sur quatre années.

En avril 2024, l’ouvrage Publi Fluor est lancé. Cet essai collectif non standard tente à la fois de raconter la vie d'un modèle de lettres – avec celles de ses auteur·ices successif·ves et leurs outils – tout en élargissant le champ pour suivre les lézardes entre les différentes histoires que la pratique de Chrystel Crickx convoque. La police numérique est au même moment republiée sous le nom Publi Fluor.

Visitez les recherches associées à l'histoire de ces lettres, via les extraits publiés sur le site web dédié et en feuilletant la publication spécimen.

Cet essai collectif non standard mené par le Groupe de recherche Crickx et des contributeur·ices extérieur·es (praticien·nes, designeur·ses, artistes et penseur·ses actif·ves) tente de dresser à la fois le portrait d'une femme et de ses objets -- des outils, des lettres, des meubles et des boîtes de rangements -- mais élargit aussi le champ pour suivre les lézardes entre les différentes histoires que cette pratique convoque.

Article paru dans Druk en 2000.

Petit article dans le magazine Médor

Snapshots | iceberg

Inside this repository

Log

 

Antoine BEGONironized

— initial commit

Saturday, 23rd April 2011 - 14:45

 

Antoine BEGONinterpreted

— creating Crickx font package

Saturday, 23rd April 2011 - 14:48

 

Antoine BEGONlet out

— test

Monday, 25th April 2011 - 09:52

 

Antoine BEGONrevealed

— test

Monday, 25th April 2011 - 10:56

 

Antoine BEGONblabbed out

— test

Monday, 25th April 2011 - 11:18

 

Antoine BEGONsaid

— update - Starting CrickxDroite spacings

Monday, 25th April 2011 - 12:54

 

Antoine BEGONclaimed

— update on CrickxDroite - metrics

Tuesday, 26th April 2011 - 18:41

 

Antoine BEGONtattled

— Crickx almost ready for release - few metrics are missing

Thursday, 28th April 2011 - 13:59

 

Antoine BEGONshouted

— one of the last update, all accentuated glyphs are done

Thursday, 28th April 2011 - 20:35

 

Antoine BEGONrevealed

— Crickx package is ready for release git add -A

Friday, 29th April 2011 - 12:45

 

Antoine BEGONemited

— adding SPACE to CrickxDroiteRush

Friday, 29th April 2011 - 15:56

 

Ludivine Loiseaucomplained

— test file

Monday, 9th May 2011 - 21:58

 

Stéphanie Vilayphioudisclosed

— mix blobby img par pierre

Monday, 24th October 2016 - 12:35

 

codingisacopingstrategycomplained

— Removed Mac OS X quasidata

Also added a .gitignore so they don’t get added again in the future

Sunday, 9th October 2011 - 12:30

 

codingisacopingstrategylet on

— Filenames in ASCII and no spaces

Sunday, 9th October 2011 - 23:19

 

codingisacopingstrategypeached

— Release should be called Source

If we work with UFO, they are meant for collaborators to built on.
They do not work for end users. Therefore, they are the source.

Uptil now most of the work has been done in FontForge.
For now it makes sense to keep the sfdir files in ‘Work’,
and generate UFO files from them.

Once collaborators start to use the UFO’s, we will have to find a way
to merge the changes back into the FontForge file.

Sunday, 9th October 2011 - 23:25

 

codingisacopingstrategyverbalized

— Fontlog and specimen update, and

Add sentences to FONTLOG,
Delete skeleton files,
Add Ludi’s LGM specimen,
Rename FONTLOG to FONTLOG.txt to help Windows users.

Monday, 10th October 2011 - 19:20

 

codingisacopingstrategyshouted

— Pierre H’s new FONTLOG text

Describing the font and the process it represents

Tuesday, 11th October 2011 - 21:43

 

Pierre Marchandadmitted

— Completed metadata

Thursday, 13th October 2011 - 13:25

 

pierrehunwrapped

— fontlog completed

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 15:15

 

pierrehlet out

— fontlog completed with names also

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 15:33

 

pierrehpublished

— crickx regular and rush with font info completed

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 16:02

 

pierrehdiscovered

— crickx regular and rush with font info completed

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 16:02

 

Pierre Marchandunwrapped

— Metadata sprint

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 16:01

 

pierrehtattled

— Merge branch 'master' of git.constantvzw.org:osp.foundry.crickx

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 16:03

 

pierrehunwrapped

— crickx sharkcut with font info completed and pictures in jpg

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 16:19

 

pierrehwhistled

— removed pictures in tif

Friday, 14th October 2011 - 16:32

 

Eric Schrijveremited

— Add iceberg and README.html, created from the foundry blog.

Saturday, 14th September 2013 - 14:55

 

Pierre Huyghebaertcomitted

— Added a unslanted (-9°) version of the CrickxSharkCut to try to harmonize with body text of the Variable publication

Thursday, 29th May 2014 - 17:32

 

Pierre Huyghebaertironized

— Tried to fix url probl for images in Readme, seems that it needs now tree/master/iceberg/ instead of simply iceberg/

Tuesday, 10th June 2014 - 05:27

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiouironized

— Merge branch 'master' of git.constantvzw.org:osp.foundry.crickx

Monday, 24th October 2016 - 12:36

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiouironized

— Slogans cut during workshop at Papier Carbone festival in BPS22, Charleroi, December 2016

Wednesday, 5th April 2017 - 16:43

 

svilayphiouspoke

— blobby montage par pierre

Monday, 24th October 2016 - 12:39

 

pierrehrendered

— Update README.html - removing /master to try to repair images

Sunday, 18th December 2016 - 13:57

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiousaid

— Merge branch 'master' of gitlab.constantvzw.org:osp/foundry.crickx

Wednesday, 5th April 2017 - 16:44

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiouconfessed

— Crickx Blobby fonsified as a digital font.

Wednesday, 5th April 2017 - 16:47

 

Stéphanie Vilayphioulet out

— test FONTLIST.txt for visualculture indexing

Tuesday, 2nd October 2018 - 10:30

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiouunwrapped

— just put font name in fontlist rather than folder names

Tuesday, 2nd October 2018 - 12:38

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiourendered

— changed blobby to droite in fontlist for testing purposes

Tuesday, 2nd October 2018 - 13:31

 

Gabrielbabbled

— Made approches acceptable on the blobby version and generated an otf file

Monday, 22nd May 2017 - 12:07

 

pierrehcomitted

— Update README.html

Thursday, 17th May 2018 - 00:24

 

pierrehsaid

— Update README.html

Thursday, 17th May 2018 - 00:43

 

pierrehwhistled

— Update README.html

Thursday, 17th May 2018 - 00:44

 

pierrehpublished

— Update README.html

Thursday, 17th May 2018 - 00:46

 

pierrehdivulged

— Update README.html with direct links to fonts files.

Thursday, 16th August 2018 - 11:57

 

pierrehblabbed out

— Update README.html without li elements temporary

Thursday, 16th August 2018 - 12:00

 

pierrehpublished

— Update README.html to update image links

Thursday, 16th August 2018 - 12:16

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiousaid

— Merge branch 'master' of gitlab.constantvzw.org:osp/foundry.crickx

Friday, 5th October 2018 - 15:32

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiouwhistled

— structure UFR

Friday, 5th October 2018 - 16:20

 

Stéphanie Vilayphiouwhispered

— webfonts

Friday, 5th October 2018 - 16:20

 

pierrehtalked

— Update README.html

Tuesday, 30th June 2020 - 10:36

 

pierrehtattled

— Update README.html

Saturday, 27th November 2021 - 11:55

 

pierrehtattled

— Update README.html

Thursday, 9th June 2022 - 23:04

 

pierrehcried

— Update README.html

Friday, 10th June 2022 - 08:17

 

Ludiconfessed

— renaming fonts from Crickx to PubliFluor

Wednesday, 24th April 2024 - 23:30

 

Ludilet out

— FONTLOG editing

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 00:01

 

Ludiwhistled

— FONTLOG update

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 00:05

 

Luditattled

— updating FONTLIST

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 00:08

 

Ludiexposed

— While Crickx was heretofore distributed under an OFL license, the distance, the paths taken by the research project, as well as our research on open licenses led us to reposition the font’s terms and conditions of use. The new version of Crickx — now Publi Fluor — is published under a CC4r license, Collective conditions for reuse.

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 00:23

 

Ludipeached

— specimen pages from the collective essay

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 00:48

 

Ludiverbalised

— updating fonts and their metadata

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 01:01

 

Ludiironized

— renaming the webfonts and updating README

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 01:21

 

Ludicomplained

— README suite

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 01:28

 

Ludicomitted

— README suite

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 01:29

 

Ludisaid

— README suite

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 01:30

 

Luditweeted

— Last chapters added to README

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 01:46

 

Ludisaid

— renamimg source files et removing old sfdir folders

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 02:01

 

Ludilet out

— updating sources files and adding dingbats to Chrystelise

Thursday, 25th April 2024 - 02:54

 

Ludideclared

— PubliFluorNormale update with 74 ligatures

Thursday, 16th May 2024 - 19:08

 

Ludispoke

— Adding full ufos

Thursday, 16th May 2024 - 19:13