David Poullard shares his time between teaching, commissioned works and “uncommissioned works”, and thus jokes that he “has a foot in three camps” but that he always remains in service to words. Words and the letters that shape them is the field of investigation of this typographic designer, who produces both signage systems and personal projects, involving both graphic and linguistic research. His productions and sociological, linguistic and patrimonial explorations question the relationship between writing and social practices. They reappropriate street inscriptions and play with their popular origins.

After studying at the École Estienne and the Centre d’Étude de l’Écriture de Jussieu, David Poullard joined the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique in 1997. In 2001 and 2004, he produced character fonts for the signage systems of the metro and RER stations. Besides commissions, he questions our language habits, in collaboration with Guillaume Rannou and Florence Inoué. The book Précis de conjugaisons ordinaires (2006) takes everyday locutions and transposes them to the infinitive before conjugating them into all modes and tenses.

David Poullard has taught typography and graphic design at the École des Beaux-Arts d’Amiens and also in Le Havre. Since 2002, he has tutored final year projects for the DSAA (higher diploma in applied arts) in Visual Communication at the École Olivier de Serres.