It’s quite a rare joy to see a studio build a continuous body of work for a single client over multiple decades, but that’s exactly what Studio Helmo, the french graphic design duo consisting of Thomas Couderc and Clément Vauchez, have done. For over 20 years they’ve headed up the visual identity surrounding Jazzdor, a contemporary jazz and improvised music festival held annually in Strasbourg, France, the fruits of which have now been published in a book.
When the pair first met the festival’s director, Philippe Ochem back in 2002, they had just finished their studies in graphic design, and Jazzdor had been slowly building its reputation from a small jazz club in Strasbourg in the 80s to “one of the most important improvised music festivals in Europe throughout the 90s”, Thomas tells us. From this first meeting, Studio Helmo went on to design the poster and programme for each year’s eclectic line-up of events, slowly shaping a distinct visual voice for the festival all the way up until 2019 when their brief somewhat expanded.
“In 2019, Jazzdor was awarded a Scène de musiques actuelles (SMAC) status by the French Ministry of Culture, and began to develop a programme of concerts that took place throughout the year, in addition to the festival: The Season. “For this, we designed all the concert posters every summer so that they could be screen-printed in early September,” Clément shares. The range of concerts that took place from 2019 to 2024 led the pair to a hefty pile of 56 posters, each designed to express the intricacies of each individual performance’s sound.