Born in France, from the age of 12 to 17 he engaged in a rigorous learning of drawing (from still life to living model) at the municipal school. He had started, as a teenager, to scrutinize wayfinding systems, maps, diagrams and timetables, on a local and national basis thanks to his frequent use of trains (so he could also look at other cities transport information systems). He liked the topographic maps at 1:25,000, which allowed him to project himself in remote landscapes, as much as the French National Railways Network (SNCF) and the Paris’ RER diagrams, both by Rudi Meyer. He started at that time collecting in a semi-systematic fashion the maps of city networks by asking for them by return of post.
His relationship to visual design was almost entirely through books as it was before the time of mass access to the internet and he was in a provincial city. Jumping from one reference to the other, he found some dead ends; he had no mentor in this domain. His interests ranged from human geography to biology diagrams along with an appetency for literature.
After a baccalauréat (A-Level) Lettres spécialité Mathématiques, he passed the entrance examination of the École des Beaux-arts de Nantes. He quickly discovered the curriculum of this school was not what he was looking for. Willing to dedicate himself to visual design, he sat another exam to enter another higher school of arts, more focused towards design, the ESAD (formerly Institut d’Arts Visuels) in Orleans. He passed, and after a year in propédeutique, dedicated to the learning of visual variables and their use as well as typography amongst many other things, he experienced at the beginning of the 2nd year the dawn of what will become instrumental to his practice: the vector design world, their formats and possibilities.
He received a DNAT (Bachelor) – Design graphique, avec les félicitations du jury. Then, because he knew he had not finished, he sat before a commission and was admitted in post-grad. He received two years later a DNSEP (Master) – Communication visuelle, avec les félicitations du jury. He was selected the year after to represent the “visual design half” of his school at the national exhibition « La création issue des écoles d’arts – Mulhouse 005 » (another student was sent for the “product design half”).
A period of questioning ensued; he is not attracted to advertising at all, nor really to the world of “communication” as it is practised in France. This is not what drove him to these studies. He knows there are other aspects, other angles to graphic design. He feels a great fondness for the Swiss and North-Italian graphic scenes from the 1960s and their descendants, wherever they are. He feels also an affinity with the heritage of the Higher School of Ulm (HfG), he wants to clarify, not obfuscate.
It is possible to see in all that a presage of his future practice,—which is far easier in retrospect.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that a design studio founded by an Italian designer formed at the Politecnico di Genova answered favorably to a speculative application in late 2006. Thus began the 10 year association with ATTOMA, in the field of information design for public transit. It is in that context that he naturally combined his interest for the representation of information with his interest for maps in the delicate and always contextualized exercise of designing public transport networks maps. This required answering to demands of the authorities while keeping in mind the fundamentals of clarity, which is in that case a civic duty.
Through his work, ATTOMA was honoured with an award fom APCI – one Étoile de l’Observeur du design – in 2012 for the work done for the public transit system of Lyon. They were also nominated in 2009 for a work smaller in scale, in Belfort (not visible anymore).
He presented their works at the University of Essex, Colchester, in 2014 for the first Schematic Mapping congress. In December of that year, he presented the relations between design and public transport cartography at the EHESS, invited by professeur A. Musset. He presented another project in the 2022 Schematic Mapping congress, at Ruhr University-Bochum.
Invited by Jug Cerović, he attended the Transit Mapping Symposium, in Madrid, in October 2022.
He went through a crisis starting in 2015 which led later in 2017 to a reconnection to Lisbon, his second city (he holds Portuguese citizenship), where the light is abundant and can be so strong, that he measures it by the quality of its shade, as he learnt to do while drawing using charcoal or graphite, as a teenager.
Starting in 2020, he began the redaction of an extensive and critical catalogue of the body of maps he started collecting around the age of 12, which contained at the time 850 pieces (not counting those in atlases). His collection now includes maps from around the world, ranging from 1853 to today, with an initial focus on transport networks maps (either geographic or schematic). Several of these pieces were first encountered in books of design history, as images only a few centimetres wide. He would not have imagined having original copies one day, but he found them indeed, eventually, thanks to the developments of information technology (allowing access to countless bookshops and auction platforms).
At this time, he continues to write the notices for the catalog of his cartothèque, which is still developing and now counts 4019 individual pieces (67.6% being network maps, as of June 2025).
He continues to work as a freelancer, and is open for consultation.
U. Meremucci
City & Transit Maps 