MMParis

What do they do?

Mathias Amzalagmet and Michael Amzalag met  in school in paris in 1988,and founded there company M/M paris in 1992.

They initially worked in the music industry designing record sleeves and posters but soon moved in to different areas,working for fashion houses doing commissions for museums and magazines, advertising,and anything with visual aspects. They are seen as visual communicates,but are mostly recognized for there contemporary use of typography. 

How do they do it?

They have a distinct illustrative hand rendered style. Often combining real life mediums and photographs.

MM paris often collaborates with photographers Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, they combine  these photographs with hand crafted original artworks,consisting of illustrative graphics as well as objects and a vast amount of materials and media. 

MMParis as well as photographers Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.  have used there blend of hands on illustration, stills and shots to produce this  Typeface called alphabet.

MMParis alphabet,letters S and T.

This is formed from black and white photographs of 26 models. They have then been cut, cropped and scaled to resemble characters. Each letter represents the name of a model. There's A for Alexis, D for David, S for Sacha and Z for Zev. MMParis likes to use old-fashioned handmade methods like cutting things out with scissors, collarge with glue, and free-hand drawing. 

MMParis letter A from alphamen.

They developed a male as well as female alphabet, called alpha-men. For the women's alphabet, they cut each photograph with scissors, making the letters feminine and sensual. curved positions and almost stretched poses are used to add to the femininity and supermodel look. The men's alphabet, meanwhile, is more aggressive, with sharp, jagged edges,and was constructed with a blade and ruler to get a sharper result, featuring harsh angles strong poses and lines.

The methods and process they have use to generate the letters is original contemporary and influential. This shows that typography can be formed from anything and everything , with strong innovation and vision, and does not always have to start  2 dimensional and digital.