Charles Peignot: Man Behind the Faces

But Peignot’s involvement did not end with these historical endeavors. He opposed typographic plagiarism, and believed that photo type would make theft by unscrupulous pirates easier. So he sought international legislation to protect type designs and understood the need to educate both the public and designers in typographical matters. In the 1960s, Peignot helped found the Alliance Typographique Internationale (ATypI), an advocacy organization that to this day includes many members of the typographic trades and arts. Because of his continued efforts, at a diplomatic conference in Vienna in 1973, eleven countries signed a treaty for the protection of typefaces. Although Peignot attended that conference, sadly he did not live to see it ratified.

Peignot took ill in 1983 and died shortly after. His contributions to France and the international community earned him his nation’s highest award as a Commandeur of the Legion d’Honneur. Though Deberny & Peignot was demolished to make way for real estate developments, the catalogs, specimens and faces he created, as well as the technology he advanced, continue to influence today’s practice. But perhaps the most inspirational gift he gave to his colleagues and friends was his willingness to change and be changed. This was typified by a remark he made in an interview only a few years before his death, when asked about Cassandre’s transitional sans-serif typeface, Peignot, which was named for Charles forty years after it was issued. He said: “I’m not entirely finished with it yet… I work on it because it still has the possibility of being a typeface of the future.”