The archive · Design & Visual · Strategic decision · 2025
Publicis Toronto turns its founder's 1926 door carving into an agency-wide typeface
Publicis Noveau fuses the letterforms Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet carved into a door in 1926 with strokes drawn by the whole agency team.
Publicis Toronto
What it had to solve
In 1926 Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet carved bold strokes into a door — the first mark of Publicis, a brand built to lead change. Nearly a century later, Publicis Toronto wanted a typography system that merged that origin with the agency's present.
How it works
When Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet founded Publicis in 1926, he carved bold strokes into a door — the first mark of a brand built to lead change. Nearly a century later, Publicis Toronto turned those strokes into the starting point for its own typography system.
The project, Publicis Noveau, asked the entire agency to contribute. Team members added their own strokes to Marcel's original letterforms, so the finished typeface physically merges lettering from the agency's founding with marks made by the people who work there today.
The result was more than a font: a living, breathing identity that embodies the agency's core belief — to lead the change. The work is archived in D&AD's awards archive under typography.
Why it lands
- The founder's door carving is a rare, authentic artifact — no other agency can claim the same starting material.
- Inviting the whole team to draw strokes made the typeface collective property, not a top-down design.
- Blending letterforms from 1926 and today made nearly a century of history visible in every character.
- A custom font turned an agency's origin story into something used daily, not a plaque on the wall.
What it did
The fusion of letterforms from 1926 and today became more than a font — a working identity that embodies the agency's core belief in leading change. The typeface project is archived in D&AD's awards archive under typography.
What you can take
Dig the brand's own archive for raw material: an artifact from the founder's first day, redrawn by the whole team, turns a typeface into shared ownership of the company's story.
Since then
Publicis Noveau continues as the agency's type system, and the project is archived in D&AD's awards archive under typography. Its lasting move is the design process itself: an identity built by the people who will use it, from the founder's first mark to their own.
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