My Lymph Nodes Are About 3 Millimeters

Meeting with Madeleine Thoby October 17, 2008, Nantes IUFM

IUFM Conference held in Nantes, in the context of Dating illustrators 2008.

Madeleine Thoby, who is the founder Editions Actes Sud Junior says rapidly developing children's publishing .
In general, historically, we observe first the development of children's books through the Library of pink or green in Hetzel. Then the publisher Hachette will also address this niche. In Flammarion, by creating Father Castor , we will further explore the psychology of the child. Then come
technological developments, with in particular the development of the technique of color, releasing the color in the album. Thus, School Recreation , we note the essort a genuine care for children in the drawing. Great illustrators such as Binette Schroeder and Tomi Ungerer mark the development of children's book and in this evolution, Gallimard youth is no exception.

Concerning the career of Madeleine Thoby , first librarian, she entered the publishing world by selling books, or being a press publishing house before, little little, work to develop youth collections. These experiments have given him a perfect knowledge of the market. Thus, Madeleine Thoby developed Syros, Bayard, and founded Actes Sud Junior.
Show: Martin Roberts, Madeleine Thoby: the soul of Actes Sud Junior , "Les Echos", No. 19118, March 18, 2004, page 18.

Originally from Saint-Nazaire and in his words "very attached to Britain," she recently worked for publishers Nantes Gufstream and Les Editions time.


Concerns Madeleine Thoby revolve around the issue of learning to read child, openness to the world and cultures . And despite the dramatic nature of certain themes of books, often the emphasis is on tenderness and humor. However, she warns: "Some subjects are not affordable for children."

Madeleine Thoby also stresses the constitutive characteristics of children's book:
- Dimension "object" of the book: "Sweet and Hot" for children.
- The children's book should be also adapted ergonomically to the child: for example, the field of vision for a comfortable reading for an adult is 17 cm, while it is only 11 cm for child.
- Avoid body typographical or different choices of fonts unreadable.
- foliate the book, so that children can be spotted.
- The text should always precede the illustration, but the image must not be tautological.

Finally, Madeleine Thoby recalls some truths sound technologies: for example, the fact (related to the books of 16 pages constituting the book), a book must consist of 16, 32, 48, 64 pages, ...

Sasusaku High School Fanfic

Pictograms: creative method of Artist Ryan Mac Guinness










We talk about readability threshold or degree of iconicity
when discussing the boundary or border violations by the graphic image while offering essential
which he can nothing removed without altering the reading.
This formal simplification exercise is crucial in visual communications,
first when it comes to designing the pictograms ...
Games framing, formal simplification, reports full / empty
contrasts of values are the tools or visual means that the designer uses
to complete this exercise.


Excerpts from the book RYAN MAC GUINNESS, Installationview , New York, Rizzoli, 2005.

Visual exposure Multiverse at the Galerie Agnès B, 2005. Galerie Agnes B
, Paris.
See also the site of Ryan mac Guinness.

Another example is the work of conservative, self-taught graphic designer Willem Sandberg, upon exposure to the Dutch Institute of 29 November 2007 to January 20, 2008 (see Pixel creations )





AD PETERSEN, Sandberg, designer and director of the Stedelijk Museum , Paris, Editions Xavier Barral, 2007.

Sandberg has created virtually all communication media of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam where he was director from 1945 to 1962. His passion for graphics actively integrate the general plan he had formed for the museum. He not only transformed after the Second World War in contemporary art center, but he also undertook to renew the interior by introducing services to the public. The artists he met in their relentless workshops, were central to its concerns. Its mission was to facilitate contact with public works, naturally, convinced that art improves life by sharpening the understanding of the contemporary world. His typography was the spatial transposition of his convictions. The Dutch institute called Ad Petersen, a former curator at the Stedelijk Museum, and Carolien Glazenburg, curator at the Stedelijk Museum, graphics, compose this exhibition, showing both the graphic work of Sandberg and the Chiefs-of work from the collection the Stedelijk, such as paintings by Mondrian, Appel, Corneille and a Calder mobile, all acquired during the period Sandberg was a director during which the Stedelijk Museum.


Other examples of pictographs in this composite image. Some of them are figurative , while others are symbols. Pierre Erwan
Treuttel, Grafik Breizh, 2008.