Intimate Audrey
Our focus on typography at the service of Intimate Audrey, an exhibition on Audrey Hepburn’s private life.
We created the lettering and graphic design for Intimate Audrey, the exhibition on Audrey Hepburn’s less well-know side, her private life, family and loved ones, far from her iconic images that made her famous all over the world.
We approached this project thanks to Chiara Dall’Olio, the exhibition curator, and Emmanuele Coltellacci from Fondazione Fotografia Modena, who were commissioned the exhibition display by Sean Hepburn Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn’s and American actor Mel Ferrer’s first son. Audrey Hepburn’s family wanted the exhibition to highlight her most intimate side, away from the public eye and Hollywood sensation.
We started from a visual concept to develop a typographic concept: we took the essential and sophisticated style of the sheath dress that she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s together with the flower dress by Hubert de Givenchy from Funny Face, and associated them to two equally iconic fonts, Helvetica and Bodoni. By combining these two suggestions, we decided to use Caslon, a font that is both simple and refined. We then started streamlining the font until we obtained a solid vertical structure, with thinner, more elegant vertical lines that complete the design. And the inspiration for this concept came directly from Audrey’s figure: a star with a simple and moving elegance.
The final lettering sums up all these aspects: the deletions represent the intimate, hidden side, and suggest that there is something more to discover under the surface lit by stardom and celebrity.
«I think they all look terrific, the image, the design, everything.»
– Steven Meisel
The exhibition Intimate Audrey was held at Espace Vanderborght in Brussels, Belgium, from May 1 to August 25, 2019.
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