Art Deco revitalised French graphic design.  The most important figure was a Ukrainian designer who worked under the pseudonym Cassandre.  His work was executed in clear, simplified forms, somewhat influenced by Cubism. 

Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, to French parents.  He settled in Paris in 1915 and enrolled in the Académie Julian, adopting the pseudonym A.M. Cassandre.  He worked at the Hachard printing house at the Place de la Madelaine in Paris until 1922, eventually saving enough money for a studio.  Au Bûcheron (1923) was one of his first works in his distinctive style, winning the first prize at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in 1925, and it secured his reputation.

In 1927 Cassandre received orders for posters from the French railway.  He designed a series of dynamic posters for the Nord Express (1927), in which the influence of Modernism is apparent.  The train has been simplified, reduced to a basic geometry of cylinders and circles.  Interestingly, Cassandre uses pictorial conventions like perspective to create abstract effects.  One of his posters depicts a train in exaggerated perspective, giving this sharp diagonal thrust, which suggests its forward motion.  The image is reminiscent of Italian Futurism painting, for example Gion Severini’s Armoured Train.  The sharp diagonals give a sense of speed and power.  There is an echo of the machine aesthetic in the depiction of the overhead cables.  Cassandre has put the names of the destinations in two intersecting lines, like train tracks.  The poster expresses a fascination with travel, speed and glamour. 

Cassandre exhibited at the 1925 Exposition and was awarded the Grand Prize for poster design. 

By the end of the Twenties he had designed his first advertising typeface, Bifur, followed by the black and grey sans serif Acier in 1930.  In 1937 he completed his first all-purpose font, Peignot, exhibited at the World’s Fair in Paris and which is still in use today.  In 1930 Cassandre founded the Alliance Graphique with Loupot and Moyrand and, during its five years, produced a large number of widely acclaimed posters.  

In 1936, following a successful retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Cassandre began designing covers for Harper’s Bazaar.   In the 1960s he designed the famous logo for Yves Saint Laurent, before committing suicide in 1968.

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