Twenty-plus years of making ideas legible.
I’m Frédéric Escalier,
art director, graphic designer and copywriter,
based in Marseille.
What I do?
I give shape and words to what you do. An identity, a campaign, a magazine, a website: image and text arrive together, because I do both.
Where I come from?
From communication in the broadest sense. My training in communication services and networks first taught me to listen, to rephrase and to get people working together. Design is how I show it.
Who for?
International groups and SMEs, institutions, laboratories, cultural organisations. From one client to the next, the vocabulary changes; the need to be understood never does.
How?
On my own when the project allows, alongside an existing team, or leading it when several disciplines need coordinating. Always working directly with you.
Off the record.
Eight questions, answered frankly.
The ad you wish you’d made?
Buzzman’s posters for Burger King.
The ones that answer back to the posters next to them in the metro.
Standing ovation.
Your latest visual jolt?
The street art show Beyond the Streets, this summer at La Villette.
Colour everywhere, with the Beastie Boys as the soundtrack.
Your artists of the moment?
Bertrand Belin’s poetry. Be Fernandez’s colours.
The madness of Key & Peele.
If you weren’t a designer?
Un-hairdresser. Or Batman.
Or running a spring roll restaurant.
What are you learning right now?
Modern Greek.
So I can order souvlaki without pointing.
Καλή όρεξη !
Your side project?
A history book for my eldest son.
Shhh, it’s a surprise!
Your passion away from the screen?
Pizza dough.
I’m getting better and better at getting it wrong.
Your secret spot in Marseille?
… Hang on… Where are you from, again?