Philippe Apeloig was born in Paris in 1962 and studied at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD). After two transformative internships at Total Design in Amsterdam, he was hired as a graphic designer at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 1985.

In 1987, after receiving a scholarship from the French Foreign Ministry, Apeloig left the Orsay and moved to Los Angeles to study and work with April Greiman. In 1993, he won a fellowship at the French Academy in Rome, where he researched and designed typefaces; his font October, created at the Villa Medici, garnered the 1995 Tokyo Type Directors Club’s Gold Award. In 1997, Apeloig became a design consultant for the Louvre, then six years later, its art director, a post he held until 2008.

From 1992 to 1998, Apeloig taught typography in Paris at ENSAD. While teaching part-time at the Rhode Island School of Design in the U.S., he applied for and was appointed full-time professor of graphic design at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. He began his new post in 1999, then was made him curator of the School’s Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography in 2000. He held the dual post until 2003, when he returned to Paris to run his own studio.

Apeloig is currently working with Jean Nouvel on the wayfinding system for the Louvre in Abu Dhabi. He is a longstanding member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2011.

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