Le Petit Journal...(15/1)

Wandered at the flea market at the Porte de Clingnoncourt and found a stall that sells old copies of le Petit Journal...actually the old newspaper appeared from time to time to me but it was until my last visit at the Tate Modern in London that really stimulated my curiosity on its history. As a decorative design, numerous designs of the front page of le petit journal are put on the wall of the museum that faces a coffee shop on 3/F. As a British contemporary arts museum, its placement of the French newspaper covers as a decoration seems a bit mis-matched to me. Inevitably, the graphic design of le Petit Journal would always be something very attractive to readers. When I was flipping the piles of copies at the stall, I was really attracted by the interesting design of the journal. One of the trademark of le Petit Journal is its colourful comics on its everyday frontpage. As a headline of the day, there would be a drawing ranging from a murder scenario to an army parade, a portrait of a general to an explosion scenario. Of course, photography was not popular and widely adopted at the time of the newspaper, and this provided a great room for designers to imagine and draw their pictures. It's not about the reality of the news but the way to select and display a headliner is very interesting. I wonder how the newspaper editorial was working a century and a half before. The newspaper published its first issue in 1863, and widely accepted by the Parisians, the circulation reached as many as a million copies per day in 1890. The figure is really astonishing. While the printing technology was not well developed and strictly depended on the printing house, the newspaper had stopped its publishing in 1870. More history of le Petit Journal can be found on http://cent.ans.free.fr/historique.htm. I was trying to locate the name of the designer for the frontpage drawing. A name called Eugene Damblans was found but when I looked for him on Yahoo and Google, I did not really get any satisfactory result. To me, a study of the drawings provides an affluent inspiration to the understanding of the late 19th / early 20th century in France. The concern of society, fashion design, history and international relationship can all be found on these drawings. The style of drawing was comparable with the American drawings in the early 1930's as well as some Art Deco works.
I bought a few issues of the Journal at last in the stall. The newspaper costed 5 centimes and 3.5 fr for a local annual subscription in 1900. Today, I paid 3 euros, but only for the Illustrated Supplement.