Thank you to everyone that joined last weekend's BLAG Meet. It was wonderful to hear from so many contributors to BLAG 04, and I will be publishing some of the recordings in the near future like I did for BLAG Meet: Inside Issue 03.

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Serendipity is a wonderful thing, and at last year's Benelux Letterheads I received a message from Olivier Bertrand (@surfacesutiles) about a book he was working on. It's subject is Chrystel Crickx, who just happened to ply her unique lettering trade in Brussels.

Seizing the moment, we lined up an impromptu visit from fellow Crickx Research Group member David Le Simple to talk to the assembled Letterheads about this one-of-a-kind 'typographic letterer'. I've kept in touch with Olivier, and the book project, ever since, and am delighted to share this preview of what's inside.

Woman looking at a wall adorned with colourful letters mounted to form a wall display showing their availability in different sizes.
Chrystel Crickx inside her Publi Fluor shop in Schaerbeek (Brussels) in the late 1990s.

A Vinyl Vernacular

If you'd spent any time in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek in the latter part of the twentith century, you would have noticed a proliferation of brightly coloured vinyl letters mounted to windows, shopfronts, vehicles, and any other available surface. The source of these was Chrystel Crickx's local shop, Publi Fluor.

Letters from Chrystel Crickx's Publi Flour business in all shapes, sizes, and colours.

Publi Fluor was a novel business, in that Crickx hand-cut the letters in a one-woman production line, selling them by the piece for business owners to mount themselves. The Crickx Research Group describes them as being "at the margins of standard means of communication", but that they "have shaped (and still do) the urban visual landscape, in Brussels and elsewhere".

Typographic Evolution

Crickx's father Raymond was a sign painter and letterer and founded the business that was first called Fluoréclam. He operated along more conventional lines, designing and cutting the letters before installing them for customers wherever they were needed.

Raymond Crickx, two of his different shop locations, and some of his vehicle work. The pictures were taken by members of the Crickx family between 1953 and 1973.

After his death, Chrystel Crickx, who had no formal training in the field, took over the shop. However, she didn't want to be responsible for mounting the letters.

"She preferred selling her letters inside her shop, progressively modifying her father's model in order to facilitate the application of the letters for the non-specialists unaware of the joys of typographic composition . . . Cutting letters in her kitchen behind the counter, she developed a lettering practice that was less mobile, yet more commercial."

This practice began with drawing the letters and numerals by hand to create sets in different styles and sizes. Crickx was self-taught, and while these sets "seem to ignore typographic conventions", she "empirically devised inventive design solutions that served her typographic and commercial practice".

Letters and masters from the Chrystel Crickx collection at the Crickx Research Group.

With the masters in place, she would then begin the painstaking process of marking out the vinyl and cutting out numerous copies in different colours before filing these in drawers ready for sale.

Array of grey drawers, each of which has a coloured number stuck to it beside the handle.
Drawers at Publi Fluor used to organise the cut-out letters by size and colour.

This model is without precedent, and is referred to as simply 'Crickx' by the Crickx Research Group, and a wider community of enthusiasts that has formed around her legacy.

Research & Recognition

Publi Fluor shut up shop in 2001, prompting type designer Pierre Huyghebaert to buy the entire remaining stock of Crickx's self-adhesive letters. He was not the only fan of her work and, twenty years later, a grant facilitated the formation of the Groupe de Recherche Crickx (Crickx Research Group). This multi-disciplinary collective conducts its work in parallel with teachers and students at the local art and design college, ESA la75, as well as various external collaborators.

Woman standing in front of a window, inside of which is a display stand with an arrangement of tightly packed colourful letters.
A recent photograph of the now-retired Chrystel Crickx.

The unusual and idiosyncratic Crickx model means that the group's research straddles many realms, but is ultimately directed towards drawing "a portrait of a woman and of her objects — tools, letters, furniture, and boxes — while expanding the field of investigation to examine the crackx between the various histories summoned by this practice". Their methods are equally diverse, and have included archival work, classification, interviews, and mapmaking.

This research work has now culminated in the publication of a book, Publi Fluor: Letter Business in Brussels. With its text in English, French, and Dutch, the book comprises three main sections, each telling a different part of the Crickx story and legacy. These are: the history of the Publi Fluor business and Crickx's (work)shop; the design and aesthetics of her vinyl letters, including their digitisation as fonts; and the traces of Crickx's letters, and their variants, in the city.

While only a few of Crickx's letters survive in the public realm, the work of the Crickx Research Group, and this book, ensures that her novel contribution to the typographic realm lives on.

Shop front with a window display dominated by various colourful letters. Some make out the shop name and phone number, while others are in rectangular arrays to show off various styles and colours.
The Publi Fluor shop in Schaerbeek (Brussels) in the late 1990s.
Publi Fluor: Letter Business in Brussels is published in May 2024. It is available to pre-order at the reduced price of 33€ (reduced from 37€) from the Surface Utiles website. The book is softcover, 384 pages, 168 × 230 mm (6.6 x 9.0 in), and printed in seven colours with Swiss binding. ISBN 978-2-931110-10-2.

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