# Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)

> A Franco-Belgian type practice that redesigns written French for gender inclusion inside the word. Instead of the point médian, which the Académie française and the French state call a barrier to reading, new glyphs fuse masculine and feminine endings and ligatures or 'symbiotic' strokes join letters, so inclusive and non-binary words read as one form. Led since 2018 by the collective Bye Bye Binary, it forks open-source families under open licences and its own usage conditions (the CUTE), encodes them in a Queer Unicode Initiative and spreads them through workshops, banners and magazines.

- Period: 2018–present
- Where: Western Europe, Central Europe
- Origin: Brussels: the Franco-Belgian collective Bye Bye Binary formed in November 2018 out of a 2018 meeting and workshops held jointly by the École de recherche graphique (erg) and La Cambre on inclusivity and non-binarity in typography; its Genderfluid workshop that year began BBB Baskervvol. Its sixteen active members in 2026 include Camille Circlude (a founding member), Eugénie Bidaut (who drew several of its fonts), Enz@ Le Garrec, Loraine Furter, Léna Salabert-Triby and H·Alix Sanyas. Members also developed fonts at ANRT Nancy (Bidaut's Adelphe, 2020–22) and HfG Karlsruhe (Enby Gertrude, by Salabert-Triby and Valentin Chauveau), and parallel work came from HEAD – Genève (Tristan Bartolini, 2020). It answers the rejection of inclusive writing as a barrier to reading by the Académie française (2017) and the French state: the Blanquer circular proscribing the point médian in schools (Bulletin officiel, 6 May 2021) and a bill to ban it from many official and contractual documents, adopted by the Senate on 30 October 2023. It inherits the free, libre and open-source culture of Brussels: forks, a GitLab group, the OIFL (the collective's 2021 inclusive rewrite of the OFL), and the CUTE, inspired by Constant's CC4r and launched at Constant. Circlude's 2023 book surveys six years of experiments (2017–2023), and the research goes on as TYPO-POST, led by Enz@ Le Garrec and Circlude and funded by FRArt (F.R.S.-FNRS)
- Branch: Counterculture
- Also known as: Typographie post-binaire, Typographie inclusive, Inclusive and non-binary typography, Bye Bye Binary (BBB), Post-binary glyphs and ligatures
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/post-binary-typography/

## Use it with care

This is the living practice of a queer, trans and non-binary community and of named designers, most of them active: do not use the glyphs as decorative 'Pride' texture or for brand campaigns that ignore the people they were made for; follow the CUTE that comes with the fonts: credit and link the designers, keep the files complete, give on its sliding scale (€300 to €1,000 for a cultural institution) and respect its answer to companies that want an inclusive image to pinkwash: 'Look elsewhere'; and never attribute a generated poster or font to the collective or prompt an image model with its members' names. Image models invent fake ligatures and misspell French, so set real inclusive words in the actual fonts and have them checked by people who use them. Type the median-dot forms and let the OpenType features display the glyphs, rather than pasting QUNI's Private Use Area characters, which screen readers cannot voice meaningfully and which turn into blanks or wrong signs when copied or shown in another font. In France, inclusive writing with the point médian is proscribed in schools by circular (2021) and a Senate bill sought to ban it more widely (2023), so check before setting official French public documents this way.

## How it works

- Design the change inside the word: draw glyphs, ligatures and linking or 'symbiotic' strokes that fuse masculine and feminine endings into one sign, instead of splicing them with a point médian, a hyphen or parentheses, which still put one gender before the other.
- Fork an existing open-source family and add the inclusive glyphs to it, as BBB Baskervvol extends ANRT's Baskervville and BBB Poppins TN extends Poppins, then publish them (under OFL, OIFL or CC BY-NC-SA) with the CUTE travelling in the same download: credit and link the designers, share complete files, keep every post-binary character in a fork and add to its name, and give on a sliding scale, because free is not gratis.
- Where the text must be read at length, keep its typographic colour: the invented letters are new fused forms set in otherwise conventional text, not distorted or fragmented type. Offer degrees of intervention, as Adelphe does with a median dot, subscript diacritics or an alternate e with ligatures, and leave the layout around it plain, in a classical serif or a geometric sans.
- Where the message is the point, make the glyphs loud: set manifestos on banners, fanzines and programmes in many post-binary faces at once, with gradients, chrome script, rendered stars and pearls, sparkles and flowers, or stick the inclusive glyphs into the text like stickers, as an answer to the Académie française, ministers and senators who say inclusive writing hinders reading.
- Build the alphabet together and make it typeable: develop fonts in workshops, credit every contributor, and encode the new characters in one shared scheme, the Queer Unicode Initiative, so the same keystrokes work across the whole library.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Classical text block](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/classical-text-block/) (characteristic)
- [Collage & layering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/collage-and-layering/) (characteristic)
- [Column grid](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/column-grid/) (occasional)
- [Central symmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/central-symmetry/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Measured density](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/measured-density/) (characteristic)
- [Horror vacui](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/horror-vacui/) (occasional)
- [Layered information](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/layered-information/) (occasional)

### Typography
- [Experimental & distorted](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/experimental-and-distorted/) (defining)
- [Eclectic mixing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/eclectic-mixing/) (characteristic)
- [Transitional serif](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/transitional-serif/) (characteristic)
- [Humanist & Garalde serif](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/humanist-and-garalde-serif/) (characteristic)
- [Geometric sans](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/geometric-sans/) (characteristic)
- [Ornamented display](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ornamented-display/) (characteristic)
- [Blackletter](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/blackletter/) (occasional)
- [Type as image](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/type-as-image/) (occasional)

### Colour
- [Light ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/light-ground/) (characteristic)
- [Limited spot colours](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/limited-spot-colours/) (characteristic)
- [Gradients](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/gradients/) (characteristic)
- [Pastel](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pastel/) (occasional)
- [Fluorescent & neon](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/fluorescent-and-neon/) (occasional)
- [Iridescent & holographic](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/iridescent-and-holographic/) (occasional)
- [Dark ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/dark-ground/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Squiggles & confetti](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/squiggles-and-confetti/) (occasional)
- [Angular & zigzag](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/angular-and-zigzag/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Flat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat/) (characteristic)
- [Photocopy & distress](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/photocopy-and-distress/) (occasional)
- [Chrome & 3D render](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/chrome-and-3d-render/) (occasional)

### Ornament
- [Restrained accents](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/restrained-accents/) (characteristic)
- [Abundant decoration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/abundant-decoration/) (occasional)
- [Cosmic & celestial](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/cosmic-and-celestial/) (occasional)
- [Floral & vegetal](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/floral-and-vegetal/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Typography only](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/typography-only/) (characteristic)
- [Found & vernacular imagery](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/found-and-vernacular-imagery/) (occasional)

### Medium & production
- [Offset printing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/offset-printing/) (characteristic)
- [Web & CSS](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/web-and-css/) (occasional)
- [Risograph](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/risograph/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Rebellious & subversive](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rebellious-and-subversive/) (defining)
- [Communal & popular](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/communal-and-popular/) (defining)
- [Utopian & idealistic](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/utopian-and-idealistic/) (defining)
- [Playful & witty](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/playful-and-witty/) (characteristic)
- [Agitational & persuasive](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/agitational-and-persuasive/) (occasional)
- [Warm & approachable](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/warm-and-approachable/) (occasional)

Avoids: Authoritative & institutional, Luxurious & glamorous, Painterly illustration, Earth & mineral

Palette: #f6f3ee, #151515, #d42a7f, #a99be0, #ede07a, #ee5d63

Typefaces: BBB Baskervvol (Bye Bye Binary, from 2018), a post-binary fork of ANRT's Baskervville, BBB Poppins TN (Eugénie Bidaut and Camille Circlude, 2022), after Jonny Pinhorn's Poppins, Adelphe (Eugénie Bidaut, ANRT, 2022), in Germinal, Floréal and Fructidor versions, BBB Sprat (Eugénie Bidaut and Julie Patard, 2022, for the FAME festival in Brussels), after Ethan Nakache's Sprat, Enby Gertrude (Léna Salabert-Triby and Valentin Chauveau), begun at HfG Karlsruhe and extended with non-binary ligatures in workshops, BBB Palissandre (Eugénie Bidaut, 2026), a post-binary revival of Rudolf Koch's Neuland with ligatures and nested glyphs, BBB Love & Rage (Bye Bye Binary), shown in specimens in the magazine N° e·u

Known for: Bye Bye Binary, BBB Baskervvol (from 2018), ANRT's Baskervville collectively augmented with inclusive and non-binary glyphs, begun in the Genderfluid workshop of 2018 (Julie Colas, Louis Garrido, Ludi Loiseau, Édouard Naze, Marouchka Payen, Mathilde Quentin), with glyphs and OpenType features added by Enz@ Le Garrec and Camille Circlude for a book in 2020; Eugénie Bidaut and Camille Circlude (Bye Bye Binary), BBB Poppins TN for the 2022–23 season identity of the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles (published June 2022): text and display optical sizes, letters redrawn with diagonal terminals, and, in the theatre's words, 'almost no more midpoint, but many new glyphs'; Eugénie Bidaut, Adelphe (ANRT graduation project 2020–22, released 2022 under the SIL Open Font License), a text face for long inclusive texts in three versions: Germinal (median dot), Floréal (subscript diacritics) and Fructidor (alternate e and ligatures); Tristan Bartolini, L'Inclusif·ve, an epicene set of signs redrawn from Laurenz Brunner's Akkurat in which letters interlock or overlap so both endings stay legible (Bachelor in Visual Communication, HEAD – Genève; Prix Art et Humanité of the Red Cross, 2020); not distributed as a font, since he holds no rights to Akkurat; Bye Bye Binary, typothèque 2.0 of post-binary fonts by designers inside and outside the collective, launched with the CUTE (Conditions d'Utilisation Typographiques Engageantes) at Constant, Saint-Gilles, Brussels, 26 September 2024 (on show to 16 February 2025); Bye Bye Binary, manifesto banners on gradient and black grounds, with chrome script ('Trans', 'Pédé', 'Bi', 'Gouine'), rendered pearls and spiky stars, blackletter, sparkles and purple roses, first shown at La Station – Gare des Mines, Paris, and at the centre of 'LEADER PRIDE 2' with H·Alix Sanyas, Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest, 20 June to 20 September 2025; mini studio, programme of the 71st Rencontres de Lure, 'Lure et compagnie' (August 2023): a photocopy-look fanzine in one family (BTP) with inclusive glyphs from Adelphe, BBB Baskervvol, Homoneta and other fonts stuck into the text like stickers, 'voluntarily visible and disruptive'; Camille Circlude, La Typographie post-binaire: au-delà de l'écriture inclusive (Éditions B42, November 2023; designed by deValence)

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Alike in its design choices: [Tropicália Graphic Design](https://stylogeny.com/styles/tropicalia-graphics.md) (1964–1975), 42% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/lubalin-typographics.md) (1962–1985), 42% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Emigre & Early Digital Type](https://stylogeny.com/styles/emigre.md) (1984–1998), 41% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Push Pin Style](https://stylogeny.com/styles/push-pin.md) (1954–1980), 38% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography](https://stylogeny.com/styles/deconstructivist-typography.md) (1980–1998), 37% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Angura Theatre Poster](https://stylogeny.com/styles/angura-poster.md) (1965–1985), 37% alike

## Sources

- 'Typographie inclusive', Wikipédia (French), https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographie_inclusive (the 2018 meeting organised by the erg and La Cambre in Brussels on inclusivity and non-binarity in typography; Bye Bye Binary created as a Franco-Belgian collective in November 2018; Loraine Furter as a member; Camille Circlude, La Typographie post-binaire, B42, 2023; Marie Boulanger's 2019 thesis 'XX, XY: Sexe, Lettres et Stéréotypes', presented at TypeCon in Minneapolis; Tristan Bartolini's epicene alphabet L'Inclusif·ve and the Prix Art Humanité of the Red Cross, 15 October 2020; the magazine issues N° é·e, May 2025, and N° e·u, May 2026)
- Nayansaku Mufwankolo, 'Inclusive typography', interview with Tristan Bartolini, Issue (HEAD – Genève), 3 November 2020, https://head.hesge.ch/issue/en/publications/inclusive-typography-tristan-bartolini-nayansaku-mufwankolo (a new system of characters that transcends gender binarism in French; Bachelor in Visual Communication; drawn from Laurenz Brunner's Akkurat, to which he holds no rights, so the alphabet is not available; interlocking signs such as 'inclusif·ve' and superposition for 'étudiant/étudiante'; Prix Art et Humanité 2020)
- Bye Bye Binary, https://www.byebyebinary.space/ (a Franco-Belgian collective formed in November 2018 describing itself as an educational experiment and a community; glyphs, ligatures and punctuation for French; the 2026 list of active members, among them Axxenne, Camille°Circlude, Eugénie Bidaut, Enz@ Le Garrec, Loraine Furter, Léna Salabert-Triby, H·Alix Sanyas and Sophie Vela; the CUTE, 2024, a usage contract that travels with the font files and addresses designers' economic conditions; the typothèque and the Queer Unicode Initiative)
- 'Bye Bye Binary typotheque 2.0 launch', Constant, https://constantvzw.org/site/Constant_V-Bye-Bye-Binary-typotheque-2-0-launch.html (opening 26 September 2024 at Rue du Fortstraat 5, Saint-Gilles; on show to 16 February 2025; workshop 9 November 2024; the typothèque distributes post-binary fonts designed by people inside and outside the collective; the CUTE licence)
- 'LEADER PRIDE 2: H·Alix Sanyas and Bye Bye Binary', Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest, https://cac-passerelle.com/en/exhibitions/archives/h.alix-bye-bye-binary/ (20 June to 20 September 2025; the collective formed in 2018 in workshops held jointly by the erg and La Cambre; glyphs, ligatures and elements of symbiosis or liaison; QUNI and CUTE; banners first shown at La Station – Gare des Mines, Paris; fanzines and printed objects; installation photographs of the banners: gradient and black grounds, chrome script 'Trans', 'Pédé', 'Bi', 'Gouine' with rendered pearls, shaded spiky stars, blackletter, sparkles and purple roses)
- 'Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, 2022–2023 season', Fonts In Use, contributed by Louann Hergott, 3 December 2022, https://fontsinuse.com/uses/50528/theatre-national-wallonie-bruxelles-2022-2023 (BBB Poppins TN by Eugénie Bidaut and Camille Circlude after Jonny Pinhorn's Poppins; two optical sizes; F G l t and H L R T e f r y redrawn with diagonal terminals; 'almost no more midpoint, but many new glyphs'; artwork published June 2022)
- 'BBB Baskervvol', Fonts In Use, https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/231814/bbb-baskervvol (a fork of ANRT's Baskervville augmented since 2018; Genderfluid workshop participants; Enz@ Le Garrec and Camille Circlude's additions for a book in 2020; uses including Papier Charbon's Une femme m'apparut, 2024)
- 'Bye Bye Binary' foundry and typeface pages, Fonts In Use, https://fontsinuse.com/foundry/4787/bye-bye-binary (BBB ReadMe, Enby Gertrude, BBB Palissandre, BBB Sprat and Nudles with their designers and dates; Adelphe at https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/198538/adelphe as an ANRT 2020–22 project released in 2022 under the SIL Open Font License)
- '“Lure et compagnie”, Rencontres de Lure 2023', Fonts In Use, contributed by mini studio, https://fontsinuse.com/uses/60463/lure-et-compagnie-rencontres-de-lure-2023 (fanzine-style programme, copy-machine look, one family, inclusive glyphs from several fonts stuck into the text as stickers to mock criticism of their legibility)
- Eugénie Bidaut, 'Genre & Typographie: Redessiner les lignes', ANRT, presented 31 March 2022, https://anrt-nancy.fr/en/projets/genre-typographie-redessiner-les-lignes (Adelphe's Germinal, Floréal and Fructidor versions; mutant letters, ligatures and symbiosis elements in Bye Bye Binary's library; QUNI as a shared encoding because keyboards lack these characters)
- Éditions B42, 'La Typographie post-binaire: au-delà de l'écriture inclusive', https://editions-b42.com/produit/la-typographie-post-binaire/ (Camille Circlude, November 2023, 224 pp., designed by deValence; typography as an emancipatory technology; the author as a founding member of Bye Bye Binary; six years of experiments, 2017–2023)
- Surfaces Utiles, 'Bye Bye Binary – N° é·e' and 'Bye Bye Binary – N° e·u', https://www.surfaces-utiles.org/bye-bye-binary-n1.html and https://www.surfaces-utiles.org/bye-bye-binary-n2.html (editors, designers and contents of the collective's magazine; typo·graphic gestures that enrich the texts 'like glitter'; specimens of BBB Love & Rage; a manifesto for a queer and decolonial typographic neutral)
- typo-inclusive.net, https://typo-inclusive.net/ (the long-term research that began as Camille Circlude's master's research in gender studies; the TYPO-POST project led by Enz@ Le Garrec and Camille Circlude and funded by FRArt, F.R.S.-FNRS; an inventory of inclusive fonts)
- Bye Bye Binary, CUTE: Conditions for Engaging Typographic Use, v.01, written January 2023, published 2024, http://genderfluid.space/documents/2024_BBB_CUTE-EN.pdf (the library's fonts under OFL, OIFL or CC-BY-NC-SA; the OIFL drafted by the collective in 2021 as an inclusive rewrite of the OFL; credit the designers and link the source, share complete files, find your place on the donation scale (€10–50 to support research, €50–500 for a local commercial enterprise, €300–1,000 for a cultural institution) and, for a large company that wants to 'give yourself an inclusive image and pinkwash your structural shortcomings', 'Look elsewhere'; forks may not delete post-binary characters and must add a complement to the font name; 'distances itself from the received idea that "free" equals "gratis"'; 'inherits the culture of Free, Libre and Open Source'; inspired by Constant's CC4r, written at the Unbound Libraries work session, 2020)
- Bye Bye Binary, Lexiquni, https://www.byebyebinary.space/lexiquni.html (QUNI's encoding placed in the Supplementary Private Use Area-A; OpenType features make the right glyphs appear automatically as inclusive French with the median dot is typed)
- Bye Bye Binary group on GitLab, https://gitlab.com/bye-bye-binary (the collective's code and font hosting; 'BBB est une collective, une expérimentation pédagogique, une communauté')
- Weka (AFP), « L'Éducation nationale interdit l'utilisation de l'écriture inclusive », 12 May 2021, https://www.weka.fr/actualite/?p=124757 (the Blanquer circular in the Bulletin officiel of 6 May 2021 proscribes 'l'écriture dite inclusive qui utilise notamment le point médian' in schools and the ministry, citing obstacles to learning the language and reading)
- Académie française, « Déclaration de l'Académie française sur l'écriture dite "inclusive" », 26 October 2017, https://www.academie-francaise.fr/actualites/declaration-de-lacademie-francaise-sur-lecriture-dite-inclusive (adopted unanimously; a 'confusion qui confine à l'illisibilité'; French 'en péril mortel')
- Public Sénat, « Le Sénat adopte à une large majorité une proposition de loi pour interdire l'écriture inclusive », 31 October 2023, https://www.publicsenat.fr/actualites/parlementaire/le-senat-adopte-a-une-large-majorite-une-proposition-de-loi-pour-interdire-lecriture-inclusive (adopted on 30 October 2023 by 221 votes to 82; carried by Pascale Gruny (LR); bans inclusive writing in legal acts, employment contracts, instruction manuals and documents of public-service bodies; aimed mainly at the point médian and pronouns such as 'iel')
- Rocket Validator, 'HTML Guides – issues tagged as pua', https://rocketvalidator.com/html-validation/tag/pua (screen readers cannot interpret Private Use Area characters meaningfully; without the font they show as blank squares or other glyphs; pasted elsewhere they give garbled or missing content; the W3C and the Unicode Consortium advise against them in publicly exchanged documents)

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Post-Binary Typography (Bye Bye Binary and Inclusive French Type)”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/post-binary-typography/