Our manifesto-name derives from our reaction to our daily visual environment. As graphic designers, we consider it our job to try and provide a simple, efficient and economic solution to often complex visual communication problems, in contrast to most of the current production in this area characterized, in our opinion, by a proliferation of vacuous aestheticisms, rejecting the relentless deterioration of imagery and the wasting of material, of glazed paper.

Based initially in France, our group consists of a permanent hardcore composed of three people, FC75, JBP76 & PPD69, regularly reinforced by personalities, including notably RL74, BR74, JV74, GV75, ALC70 or LVC71, together with occasional contributors.

This quest for simplicity and quality is applied at two levels: in design and realization, on the one hand, in message receiving, on the other hand. To begin with, the difficulty with design work is to provide original responses for each project, without prior stylistic requirements systematically applicable to all contexts. This for us is where efforts are concentrated, in the understanding of the management of constraints with respect to available means at a given moment. After wich, the ease of perception, the readability of the information conveyed is of prime importance: the “line of least resistance” in our name must be taken to cover the necessity for maximum visibility and for readability. We indeed set this understanding of the contexts as the minimum basis to be complied with, but reject all narrow or rigid functionalism.

The “least resistance” action line is thus paired with a “least effect” preference (« le moindre effet » in french), in that we refuse stylistic effects devoid of precise fonctions or true enhancement. The clarity of the message, spacing decisions and the quality of the subject matter, applied to different scales and fields of intervention, are included in our imperatives.