The elegant, science-inspired graphic design practice of Margot Lévêque

It’s not often you come across a portfolio as competent as Margot Lévêque’s and find out they’ve only been working within the creative world for three years. However, when we got in touch with the French designer to find out a bit more about her, that’s exactly what happened.

“It took me a long time to get into graphic design,” she explains. Born in Normandy, Margot’s mother has a clothing shop and her father is an oyster farmer: “I wasn’t raised in an artistic environment at all,” she adds. “I did a bachelor’s degree in science, and then went to a school for biology. One day, I realised that science was not my vocation,” Margot recalls of the moment she decided to move to Paris, and enrol in the graphic design course at ECV Paris.

Fast forward a few years and Margot’s skills have progressed rapidly since her first day where she was “completely lost,” currently completing her studies with a master’s in type design. Despite this enormous career shift, Margot’s scientific background still creeps into her work every now and then.

While studying, her class was tasked with creating a bilingual literary novel with three short stories from HG Wells. As Wells is known for being “the father of science-fiction,” Margot decided to reference the esteemed writer’s biological studies. As a result, she designed a book which incorporates annotations and hand-drawn elements, inspired by biology school books which get filled with notes, creating a personal and unique layout every time. “I wanted to create an editorial object with this concept as if this novel was a personal notebook of HG Wells, placed on his bedside table,” she explains.

Upon completing the typesetting, Margot decided to include illustrations, inspired by anatomical drawings, and iconographic notebooks of saturated imagery placed in between each short story to provide a visual and abstract reading of each one. This details-first, expressions-second process is typical of how Margot tends to work.

“I would say, that after defining a concept and a path for a project, the realisation takes place in two steps: the first one, the typography and all that goes with it (grids, micro-typography, layout…). The second – my favourite part – is the graphic freedom,” she explains. It’s here that Margot’s work is really defined. In such a short space of time, she has developed a visual language that’s elegant and reflects her love of “vintage stuff, the French variety. However,” she adds, “there is always a kitschiness in me that overhangs everything.”