assembling

Jerome Rigaud does enjoy crossing the boundaries of design fields by using computers’s keyboards, or diy tools; this text is a short introduction on how he came to work in London, with and for who.

Jerome Rigaud obtained a degree in Furniture Design at the ESAD (Reims School of Design, in France, 1995-1999), did some internships and freelance jobs for parisian agencies like Jean Marie Massaud, Bouroullecs and Bretillot+Valette.
He then lived in Switzerland where he studied Typography and Media+Interaction Design at ECAL (Lausanne, Switzerland, 2000-2002 and 2002-2004). At the end of his studies, his professors offered him the chance to continue a post-graduate degree while assisting them – he gained experience assisting teachers in typography classes (François Rappo, Norm), graphic design and media+interaction design (Fabric.ch, zai.etoy). He designed during the same time the printed communication of the school.

Fontnest (March 2002) is the typographer’s collective he launched in Lausanne Switzerland; for two years the group will meet informally and develop typefaces.

While at ECAL, he started mixing graphic design, typography and coding skills to develop generative applications that let him design books based on rules and constraints; Sun Tzu «The Art of War», «Analog Information» and «TXT» are some of the limited printed edition which emerged from that practice, allowing him to develop an experimental and crafted practice. Some of these books were featured in the book «Altitude, The New Swiss Graphic Design» by Die Gestalten Verlag (October 2006).

Jerome Rigaud launched R-Echos (March 2004), an online magazine. R-Echos presented a daily selection of articles he reads and a selection of links and external texts. The interface of the magazine has been modified, developed and designed with the objective of simplifying access to a huge amount of information: it evolved structurally and visually until its (temporary) discontinuation (June 2007). This magazine is an on-going Electronest R&D projects supported (and supporting) trough various client/project/work like the London gallery Gasworks, Domus Magazine, and eventually the Design Museum.

While he was preparing his diploma (September 2004), Kitsuné, the french music label, has been the first client to use his knowledge and skills to redevelop their Kitsune website (June 2004) and asked him to help manage their online communication, shortly followed by Maison Martin Margiela (November 2004) for which he developed their very first Electronic Presence, through a website and few interactive pieces.

At that time he was founding his first company: Electronest with Fritz Menzer in Switzerland (January 2005), a platform for Research and Development (R&D) in the fields of Electronic Presence, Design, Sound Synthesis and Tangible Computing.

He established The Bunkery Studio (September 2006) with Alexandre Bettler where he installed his practice on top of Hoxton Street in London. The Bunkery hosts creative industry independent workers and will soon edit limited editions of products.
Since the new developments of Electronest (June 2007), he now works with Pierre Schmidt: Electronest decided to officially develop a new branch in London as part of a continuous and now necessary development to further establish clear processes and clear relationships in between research and commercial projects.

Jerome Rigaud gives talks and workshops about culture, graphic design and new technologies, most notably in Paris (Horizome, FING), Brussels (Artist’s Book, workshop at La Cambre), Lausanne (Robots, workshop at ECAL+EPFL), London (In & Out 1, at the Camberwell College of Art) and Stuttgart (In & Out 2, workshop at the Merz Akademie).

Recent collaborations includes design teams such as Åbäke, Damien Poulain, Alexandre Bettler, Daniel Mair, Gaelle Denis.
Some of his latest clients include art galleries in London: Serpentine Gallery, Maureen Paley, music bands: Daft Punk and Digitalism; communication agencies or production companies: JJMarshall Associates, Ramp Industry, Passion Picture and Hi-Res; fashion labels: Maison Martin Margiela, Makin Jan Ma and Backhand TTC.

After 3 years, he is still taking care of the electronic interests of Kitsuné.
Electronest clients and projects, so far, include: the electronic presence for the design company Design By Build in collaboration with DigitalClub, a streaming web application for Kitsuné to privately and securely broadcast The Cazals band’s demo, the Playstation Season blog for Sony Europe in collaboration with Ramp Industry and Sam Blunden from Brille records, and visuals for the live show of Digitalism in collaboration with Åbäke.
You can find some information on his personnal hub: jeromerigaud.com as well as some more links to click.