Biography
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. Founder of Typofonderie, his expertise enables him to propose bespoke typefaces for Arjowiggins, Baltimore Sun, Beyoncé Knowles, Costa Crocieres, France Télécom, Louis Vuitton, RATP (Public Transport in Paris), Yves Saint Laurent Beauty. His retail typefaces are distributed through typofonderie.com. He is honorary President of the Association Typographique Internationale (was ATypI President in 2004–2007). Since 2012, he is the programme director for typographic & type design at ECV (France). Introduced to French Who’s who in 2009.
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. Founded the french community Le Typographe in 2003. He published Lettres Françaises, a book (in French & English) that shows all contemporary French, digital typefaces. For the Linotype Library Platinum collection, he has created a revival of the Sabon, a Jan Tschichold revival of Garamond in 2002. 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 (Germany), of the of the 1st Biennial of Slovene Visual Communications (Slovenia), of the Typeface design competition TDC2 (United States), of the Design category at the Club des directeurs artistiques. He launched with Guillaume Chifflot, the new category Typography at the Club des directeurs artistiques for which he was president of the jury.
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. Vuitton Persona selected by the Club des directeurs artistiques for their annual “Palmarès” 2009. Retiro received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design at the TDC2 2010, won the Prix 2009 of the Club des directeurs artistiques, selected for the Designpreis 2011 and received the Best in Book 2011 at the Creative Review Type Annual. AW Conqueror won the Prix 2010 of the Club des directeurs artistiques and received Silver Award winner at the Ed-AWards 2011.