Raymond SAVIGNAC

Raymond Savignac, "the man who makes the walls smile and the paper thinks".
Monsavon, Gitannes cigarettes, SNCF, BIC pens, Air France, Citroën, Maggi, Cinzano, Michelin, Dunlop: for more than half a century and with more than 600 posters, Savignac's humorous scenes have covered the walls of France.
Raymond Savignac began his career as a draftsman at the Compagnie des Transports Parisiens, then worked with Robert Lortac, who ran a cartoon studio, where he reproduced works by Cassandre, Loupot and Carlu to be included in advertising events.
In 1935, he began an apprenticeship as poster designer at the Alliance Graphique with Cassandre as tutor. From the master, he will remember: "The poster is only a tool of communication between the trader and the public, something like the telegraph. The poster designer plays the role of telegrapher, he does not send a message, he transmits it. We don't ask him for his opinion. We only ask him to establish a clear, powerful and precise communication."
Like Villemot, with whom he collaborated for several years, his career really began after the war. In 1949, he achieved success with his Monsavon milk soap poster, which shows a cow whose milk creates soap directly under her udders. He will say, "I was born at the age of forty-one from the udders of the Monsavon cow."
Influenced by Chaplin's work, he creates "visual gags" with his posters. His advertising messages are humorous, optimistic, with cheerful images full of poetry.
Through the simplicity of the lines, the schematization of the design and the use of ideograms that synthesize content and form, he eliminates anything that is not essential. You can see it in his poster for the Frigeco refrigerators, where a man is half frozen. The poster for Eutectic glues, where the man is torn in half, is also a good example of this way of presenting his subjects. The audience will also remember Cinzano's zebra (1951), the Air France giraffe (1956), Maggi's pot au feu beef (1959), the BIC ballpoint pen kid (1960) and his famous poster from the film "La guerre des boutons" (1962).
For Raymond Savignac, "the reading of the poster must be instantaneous. In a fraction of a second, the man in the street must be able to understand it. The poster designer must therefore draw big: big like Punch who has style and is never vulgar".
Officer of the Legion of Honour and Officer of the Arts and Letters, Savignac has been exhibited throughout the world and has left its mark on his time. Upon his death, the Nouvel Observateur wrote: "Raymond Savignac marked the history of French poster art with his poetry, his sense of shortcut and his joyful humour".