Nicolas est typographe à l'ancienne et conduit de vieilles locomotives

The first time you arrive in a printing house, you have this smell, you have this engine noise, you feel your life. You need a bit of smell, a bit of grease, a bit of hot oil, it makes the atmosphere. I present to you Edwige de Morge, Yvonne de l'Ecole Romande de Typographie, Big Ben de Toronto Canada, Etel de la Société Générale des Pompes Funèbres de Paris, Adelaide de Berne, Charlotte de Haigle, and finally Bert d'Interlaken. They have all their little names, and you learn to know each other. They have their own personality, they are usually very clumsy. And to be able to yell at them from time to time, by giving them a name, it allows you to go further. The printing of train tickets like that, in the old days, is a specialty of the Yeti people. It's my little dada. The printing work, whether it's on these machines or on the others, is completely anachronistic. These machines are over 100 years old for some, but they work so well that it's a shame to not use them. So, indeed, you can go for an original, for a Douding, but it's so much nicer. Hello, Atelier Typo. So, for the tickets for the VV boat, I'm working on them. I still have some for a good little working day, and then we let them dry, and I can deliver them to you at the end of the week. So, the clients are as much railway museums, boat companies, as well as companies, I would even say current ones, like the CFF or Les Inéchalants, which still have historical trains. And then, a cardboard ticket like that is part of the nostalgia, it's part of the memory that goes with the steam engine, with the boat. It's a whole. Ladies and gentlemen, on track 6, special train, Gouët-Terroir, Nostalgie Express, stop at Montbevant and Bulle in the car, please. Ladies and gentlemen, on platform 6, it's special service, Gouët-Terroir, Nostalgie Express, calling at Montbevant and Bulle. All aboard, please, all aboard. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Tickets, please. Here they are. I used to play at the station when I was little with my brother, exchanging tickets. Becoming a member of the Dublon & Chamby museum, I really started selling them in a real station, with real people, with real money. And in the end, I'm the one who makes them. So, the loop is looped. Everything is Ouplon. Character by character. We have fun making these little tickets, it's nice. It's a pleasure to dress up. I prefer the term costume than dressing up. Dressing up is a bit of a crazy thing, let's say. Costume, we embody a function, a character, even if we have a lot of fun and we enjoy it, we try to do it as seriously as possible. It's part of the universe of Chemin de Fer. You have to put on a tie, a vest, have your onion, look at the clock. It's a bit of comedy too, but it's to be in the mood. Have a good trip. There's also a bit of an egocentric side to it. We like to hang out on the quay like this, to inflate our chest. It might be reassuring for someone as shy as me. Hello, Mr. Damoun. Levi's, please. It makes you feel confident. That's the goal of the uniform too. After that, it allows you to relive the past, without having the disadvantages. I'm a bit nervous. Have a good trip. It's okay. I'm not nervous. I wanted to make a book once, because I'm fed up with it. I've been working for the others for 25 years. Everyone's happy. I said to myself, I'm going to make one for myself, where I interpret, in my own way, all the groups that have marked me since the 70s. So, here's Les Stones. It's a tribute to Les Stones, with their famous language. And then Andy Varol, who was a friend of Les Stones. It's nothing original, but that's how it is. And then, after that, it will be in white. Yes, it will be in white. But for now, I'm quite familiar with the model. To be a typographer today, you have to want it. The formation of a typographer no longer exists. There is no school, there is nothing. So, I had to train in one way or another, and I was lucky. Among the few who were still doing this job, Jean-Renaud Dagon in Vevec, who wanted to teach me typography. The position is good. OK. So, now we need to re-ink a sheet. So, every Saturday morning, for two years, I went to Vevec to get the hang of it. Magnificent. He's a character, a hell of a character. Ken, apostrophe. He knows his job by the nails. He's nice, but he has, like all of us, let's say, a hell of a temper. It's not necessarily obvious when you arrive. You're 24, and you have this character who comes at you. It's intimidating, let's say. But once you've broken the ice, it's great. He taught me, and he still teaches me a lot of things. From time to time, he looks me down by saying that I'm a good graphist, but he doesn't know everything yet. He gives me little things, old typos. It's part of the game. And we have the same job, quite simply. Of course. No, we understand each other. That's clear. Because now he's got into typography, fortunately, because he didn't start well. He learned to be a graphist, then he had a good career, and he did typography. That's when we could get along. And then we manage to do things. Listen. Better than a supporter? Yeah. No, it's not bad. I mean, it's not bad. I don't like to say that, because it's what we did. It's a bit pretentious, but... Here's what you need. Tell me everything. It's a colleague, and that's it. And when you have a colleague, not a competitor, a colleague, you help him, and that's it. If there's a problem with the machine, he calls me to know how to solve the problem, and then we solve it. I like my colleague. It represents a lot, the friend too, but the colleague in our job, where there are almost no people who do it, I think it's good to have a colleague. They're as rare as friends. And on top of that, we have a complicity. Because if we have a client who's a bit of a pain, we call each other, and if they come to the other, we can also receive them a bit differently. No, no, we're really not coherent. There. I think the little catching up course was necessary. You say. That was good. We're lucky, the cardboard is soft. Yes. Yes, 450, it's not necessarily... I think it's a great Italian paper. It's the second time I've read it. It's beautiful. It's going to be a duty for the typist to transmit this know-how. Because in Swiss-Roman, there are only three of us to work with. So we can't be the last three. There has to be someone behind. But it's not an old job. It's a job that's been around for a long time, but we still do it, so it's not old. That's just... not old. I don't feel old. But do you think there are still possibilities? Apart from training on the job, in workshops, would there still be schools? No, there are no more schools. There are only workshops like ours that can offer that. We have to be able to transmit that. If, among the students to be trained, people realize that they can live in a decent and normal way, I think there's a possibility for the future. The few workshops that still exist, that means it's viable. Even if it's a niche market, we'll still be able to impose ourselves. I'm convinced we can make a living with that. I'm sorry, but we'll need a lot of people. So why not try to... I imagine when we buy a car, it's a car that we like. It has to look like its driver. For me, it didn't make sense to have a BMW convertible. I needed an old one. It was self-sufficient. It's a Citroën Traction Avant, from February 1940. I don't have a driver's license. And in the end, it's good to be driven around by friends. I've had a driver's license since... It must be five years ago. Maybe my childhood dream was to drive a train rather than a car. It's wonderful. We have fun like crazy, while remaining focused because it's a real railroad. We have passengers behind us. But of course, it's a childhood dream. You have to be serious when you drive a railway vehicle. There are laws. We don't have our drivers' licenses. We have medical visits, exams. It's a serious matter. But here, at Blené-Chamby, we try to have fun and make people happy first. You don't necessarily have to be serious. You have to be careful. You have to pay attention to safety. And then you have to have fun. We're arriving at the tunnel. It's a passion like any other. It's a part of me. I like to work with these machines from time to time. These old machines still have a reason to exist. You have to use them. It's fun to take a train and go through the tunnel. It's a lot of fun. It's fun to take the time. I worked for a long time in an advertising agency where we were very stressed. Everything is for the future. And to arrive in a place where you have to take the time to get there. We are lagging behind compared to other professions or even the current printing profession. But I think it's a quality of life that is very important. I love doing this kind of work. It's long and tedious but it's relaxing. We take our lead. We align the letters one after the other. We don't think about anything else. It clears your head. It's curious to have to think in another dimension because the characters are in the other direction to be in the right place on paper. So we learn to read directly on the characters in the other direction. So we have a twisted mind. Composing like this requires a certain rigour in the spelling. Which I am absolutely not. I am an apple in spelling. Everyone tells me and repeats it to me. But I heal myself by composing by hand or sometimes I have to say it out loud. It helps. Good or bad, I work. We don't make a fortune in typography but we manage to live from it. We are never really reasonable when we make our job a passion. If we have to eat pasta at the end of the month, we eat pasta at the end of the month. As long as in the morning we can get up and go to work without worrying about making a business card, without having to eat a steak or pasta, we don't care. Good evening. Your ticket to L'Ancienne. Printed at L'Ancienne. Good evening, sir. A souvenir ticket. Ma'am, your souvenir ticket. Good evening. I realize that I'm off schedule. Of course, my friends make me feel good all the time. Kindly, by the way. But why not? It's great to be off schedule. To do something a bit out of the norm, a bit different, it's pleasant, in a way. We're not like everyone else, we're not drowned in the crowd. It happens to me to go to concerts, to go out in clubs, and in the afternoon, I can be with a charming lady in a crinoline, and I, in a queue, walking around town. I'm a nostalgic person, yes. From a time I didn't know, but I'm not trying to say it was better before. The technologies, the quality of life has increased, that kind of thing. But for my own passions, whether it's typography, or ironing, yes, it was better before. And if I had been able to live certain periods, I would have been just as happy. But you have to be happy with what you have, otherwise you can't move forward.