Speculoos is a collective production centre founded by the typographers-graphic designers Alexia de Visscher and Pierre Huyghebaert, who work mostly in the cultural, institutional and associative milieux. Speculoos became a private limited liability company in 2000. This kind of organisation provides its two founders with a number of pedagogical mandates. While Speculoos’s structure is commercial in nature, its work is not merchandise; rather, it seeks to produce meaning.Speculoos focuses its attention on and expends much of its energy in the following fields: publishing and books in general; architecture and urban planning; contemporary art (visual and scenic); and cinema.Speculoos brings together and masters these related fields by bringing various skills and specialisations to its projects: general communication (print and web), cartography, stage design, design, schematic representation and visualisation of data, software development and the creation of original typographical fonts.As a platform, Speculoos is made up of an abundant network of collaborators and skills.We might attempt to list the network of current collaborators as follows:
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From: Pierre Huyghebaert <pierre@speculoos.com>
Pierre Huyghebaert (1969) – Spent a preparatory year at St Luc and four years studying visual communication at ERG. Greatly aroused by the contemporary art he was exposed to there, he plunged into a variety of concurrent professional experiences, including animated film and typography with the protolabel Hammerfonts. Founded the Mind The Gap agency in Bayreuth in 1993 and then joined the management team of the production company De Visu. In 1996 he met the graphic novel author Vincent Fortemps, the publisher Fremok (known as Fréon at the time), with whom he formed a creative partnership working mainly in the Belgian cultural milieu. They collaborated on numerous projects, characterised more by a shared conceptual approach and an interest in the ready-made than in a well-defined style. Founded the non-profit organisation
Normal and, in 2000, Speculoos. Since 2003 he has been a teaching assistant and latterly an instructor of digital art at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels (La Cambre). Since 2006 he has been a member of the nascent collective Open Source Publishing, co-founder of the diffuse initiative Towards; is working on a project of subjective and collective cartography taking Brussels as its nodal point; and is a member of the alliance of contemporary artists Potential Estate, designing residential and narrative spaces around questions of borders and identity. Since 2011 he has been using freeware to try to re-learn from the ground up his own artistic practice and how to collaborate in new ways while developing the project Co-position in the Libre Graphic Research Unit.
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From: Alexia de Visscher <alexia@speculoos.com>
Alexia de Visscher (1975) – A graphic designer and typographer and a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels (La Cambre), Alexia de Visscher has been working with Pierre Huyghebaert since 1998. Since 2000 they have been in charge of the organisation they founded together, Speculoos.
Since September 2007 she has devoted herself more specifically to the book department—Speculoosbook—dedicated to the book in general, to the graphic design of books and to explorations of evolving book forms. Speculoosbook works closely with publishers, authors and artists on various book structures and explores the new practices, uses and processes shaping the book. Speculoosbook also participates in organising events around books (awards, conferences, public talks, exhibitions, etc.).
Alongside her work with Speculoos, which occupies most of her time, Alexia held a teaching assistant position for seven years in the typography program of La Cambre and has contributed actively to two projects: the publishing firm Lustre, with Olivier Spinewine, whose publications include artists’ books (Christophe Terlinden, Myriam Hornard, Benoît Platéus, etc.) and the artists
collective Blackbookblack with Olivier Deprez and Miles O’Shea. Alexia has also been studying bookbinding for the past two years.Alexia’s graphic design is based on the history of the book, typesetting and graphic design from olden times to the present day. Before beginning work on a project she considers it from a theoretical perspective and occasionally has the time to set the fruits of this down on paper or to participate in a conference.To conclude, Alexia is a lover of books and libraries who plans the classification, digital archiving and sharing of the Speculoos library, a gold mine of vernacular and special books in which art and graphic design books, magazines, newspapers, textbooks, highway traffic codes and illustrated Larousse dictionaries can be found. The library: a veritable creative tool, a reference and a mirror of Speculoos’ practices.
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From: Delphine Platteeuw <delphine@speculoos.com>
Delphine Platteeuw (1980) – Studied graphic design (typography and experimental typography) at Sint Lukas, Gent. Freelance graphic designer since 2004 for Speculoos, specialising in book layout and publishing.
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From: Ludivine Loiseau <ludi@speculoos.com>
Ludivine Loiseau (1983) – A graduate of the typography program at the École Estienne in Paris, Ludi has lived and worked in Brussels since 2006. After two years working as a full-time graphic designer for Speculoos, since 2008 she has been developing parallel collaborations and projects. Member of the collective Open Source Publishing – osp.constantvzw.org. Founder of the type foundry OSP – osp.constantvzw.org/foundry. For the past year Ludi has worked as a lecturer in typography and taught an introduction to freeware at the École de Recherche Graphique. – http://www.erg.be – http://www.ludi.be +32 (0)487 54 60 75
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From: Nicolas Rome <nicolas@speculoos.com>
Nicolas Rome (1982) – Graphic designer, typographer and multimedia designer who graduated from the typography workshop of La Cambre in 2007. Winner of the Amis de La Cambre’s Coup de Coeur award that same year for the book 376 Villages. Joins creation and development in his work. Active in the graphic design centre Speculoos since late 2007. – http://www.nicolasrome.be
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From: Grégoire Vigneron <gregoire@speculoos.com>
Grégoire Vigneron (1975) – Studied photography and visual arts in Brussels, Namur and Arlon. Has recently completed training in bookbinding at the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Gilles (2011) and Diderot Bruxelles (2007). Specialises in contemporary bindings and volumetric creations. – http://www.autourde.be
Also:
Pierre Marchand – Is not a programmer, cartographer, artist, or all at once. He contributes to large-scale projects such as the Scribus layout software, works on his own projects, such as managing FontMatrix fonts and, for example, Fonzie, a font production application using scans which make possible several character designs. Member of the OSP.
My Lê – le-my.com
Open source Publishing – osp.constantvzw.org
Mathieu Gabiot – Mathieu-g
Stéphanie Vilayphiou et Alexandre Leray – Stdin
Ronan Deriez – Harrystudio
Ismaël Bennani et Orfée Grandhomme – Überknackig
Harrisson – harrisson.constantvzw.org
Stéphane Degroef – Stephaneetsukrii.com
Stéphane Malandrin
“J’ai voulu un studio de création rafraîchissant comme une brise de printemps, rassurant comme un arbre fruitier. Je l’ai voulu comme un jardin qui révèle des perspectives nouvelles, provoque l’étonnement dans un mouchoir de poche. Un jardin qui vous invite à parler, à vous raconter et dans lequel votre voix porte. Un jardin dont vous ressortiez porteur d’une nouvelle image, de nouveaux messages. Imaginés pour vous, créés sur vous.”
