Works in progress

Born in Geneva, Georges Calame trained at the Ecole des arts industriels there. After graduating as a graphic designer, he worked in Paris for a while before opening his own studio in Geneva in 1953. His early work mainly involved interior design and exhibition design, logo design, corporate design, print and advertising graphics, as well as book design and signage.

Georges Calame designed pavilions for Expo 64 in Lausanne and the 1967 World's Fair in Montreal. He won several prestigious competitions. His clients included the BMW Group, for whom he designed the flags in front of their headquarters in Munich, the Tagliabue furniture store, PTT, AMAM, and the Cantonal Bank of Geneva. He created the signage for EPF Lausanne in the late 1970s. Calame worked extensively abroad, including in Japan and Pakistan. Thirteen of his posters won awards in the "Swiss Posters of the Year" competition.

Calame's international success is based on a graphic design style characterized by rigor, purity, and coherence. His images are constructed with the precision of an architect. The starting point for Calame's work is often an element from reality—an object or a letter—which he simplifies to the utmost in order to arrive at the most elementary, almost abstract form. Unless they are illustrations themselves, the texts are short, set in simple and legible fonts, and spatially arranged in such a way that the image finds its language.