Jean François Porchez

Type designer, France

After training as a graphic designer, during which he focused on type design, Jean François Porchez (born 1964) worked as a type director at Dragon Rouge. By 1994, he had created the new typeface for Le Monde newspapers. Today he designs custom typefaces for the Baltimore Sun, Beyoncé Knowles, Boston Consulting Group, Costa Crocieres, France Télécom, Peugeot, RATP (Public Transport in Paris), as well as distributing internationally his retail typefaces via his typofonderie.com website. For the Linotype Library Platinum collection, he has created a revival of the Sabon, a Jan Tschichold revival of Garamond in 2002.
He is the President of the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI). He taught type design at the MA typefaces design at the Reading University (United Kingdom) and at Ensad and conduct regularly type design workshops all over the world. He also contributes regularly to conferences and international publications. He published Lettres Françaises, a book (in French & English) that shows all contemporary French, digital typefaces. In late 2001 he was the President of a jury set up by the Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale to select the new handwriting model and system for France and was a jury member of the 3rd Linotype Type design Contest.
He was awarded the Prix Charles Peignot in 1998. FF Angie (1990) & Apolline (1993) were prize-winning entries in the Morisawa typeface competition. Costa received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design at the TDC2 2000. Ambroise, Anisette, Anisette Petite, Charente, Le Monde Journal, & Le Monde Courrier were all prize-winning entries in the Bukva:raz international competition (2001). Deréon and Mencken won a Creative Review Type Awards (2006). Parisine Office won a star at the Observeur du design 07.

Contact information

  • Jean François Porchez
  • 1 rue Bernard Palissy
  • 92310
  • Sèvres
  • FR