Dijon-based Studio A. Stein is an independent design practice established in 2007 with French designer Aurélien Stein at the helm. Stein’s practice is truly centred around collaboration – working with trusted partners such as printers, photographers and copywriters to produce work for sympathetic clients.
It was in this collaborative spirit that he was approached by Parisian printers Imprimerie Chauvat-Bertau (ICB). Led by Pierre Bertau, the company produces an annual promotional calendar, working with a different designer each year.
For ICB’s 2022 calendar Bertau asked Stein to collaborate on the project, with total creative freedom given to the designer to choose the composition, paper stocks and printing techniques. Stein says, ‘The only guideline was to create a calendar that would show the extent of the printing company’s expertise.’
Stein’s approach to the artwork was heavily focused on typography, a nod to the Modernist inspiration of influential Swiss graphic designer Josef Müller-Brockmann, with a square format and rounded corners. Stein chose a different paper for each month, selecting some of his favourite textured Fedrigoni papers, including Materica, Savile Row and Woodstock.
One consistent feature was that each calendar sheet had a blind emboss of the year number ‘22’. The number of each month was printed with different printing techniques to make them dazzle – metallic Pantones, thermography and foil stamping, to name a few, all with a Singer-sewn binding.
As Stein says, ‘We imagined a calendar offering a real tactile experience and demonstrating the full range of ICB’s capabilities.’
