Joachim Roncin is the man behind the famous “Je suis Charlie”. A phrase and a logo that he created a few minutes after the attacks which targeted the editorial staff of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015.
We don't necessarily know him, and yet we all know this creation: “Je suis Charlie”. As we commemorate this week the 10th anniversary of the January 2015 attacks, these three words still resonate today.
Joachim Roncin is the author of this sentence so simple that we have all remembered it, taken it up, shared it. On January 7, 2015, he recounted his tweet. “I was shocked like everyone else,” he said before scribbling Charlie several times, before adding “I’m ‘in front’ to express a sense of belonging.”
An artistic director by trade, he remembers: “I was always told that you shouldn't use more than eight words. So, I used three.”
“I launch Illustrator, the software with which I work every day…(…) a black font on a white background. I change my mind, it will be white on a black background,” he says.
An hour after the attack, 12:52 p.m. the message was published. Joachim Roncin does not yet imagine the impact.
They will make the news by Matthieu Belliard: Joachim Roncin, the creator of “Je suis Charlie” – 06/01
Insults, threats…
He does not necessarily experience the success of his creation very well. He worked at Stylist magazine at the time, a fashion magazine and had only 400 followers on his Twitter account. From January 7, 2015, he became “the man behind the slogan”.
“This feeling of having created a formula, which was almost a burden for me, is very strange,” he concedes. Joachim Roncin recounts the period in a book A crazy story whose subtitle is telling “How I Created I AM CHARLIE and the Journey into Absurdity that Followed”.
The media calls, the political recovery, the insults, the threats too… “I struck a match where I was hoping for nuance”.
An example of this madness: his mother is Ukrainian, on January 11, 2015, he found himself propelled to the Ukrainian embassy to talk diplomacy with the Ukrainian president who came in the procession of heads of state.
Legal standoff and standoff with the RN
He also protected the phrase and the visual “Je suis Charlie”, a professional distortion no doubt, he saw the commercial recovery coming, and for him it is not. And that undoubtedly contributes to the purity of his creation. He refused to submit “Je suis Charlie”, but others tried with more than 120 requests “including two in the weapons category”, remembers Joachim Roncin.
There is also this standoff with the National Rally with the – always – recovery of the logo. At the last European elections, Jordan Bardella's list aped the slogan on posters “I am a soldier”, “I am a farmer”, “I am a policeman”…
They will make the news by Matthieu Belliard: Joachim Roncin, the creator of “Je suis Charlie” – 06/01
What is he doing today?
10 years later, he continues to share his talent as an artistic director with the French. Posters for shows by comedian Manu Payet, which also led him to work on a Césars ceremony. We don't see the artistic directors and yet we see what they produce.
For the last 5 years, he was design director for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. After making the French shed a tear, a smile…
Joachim Roncin notably participated, it's more joyful, in the creation of the Phryges
The mascots that your children may have stuffed toy at home!
Matthieu Belliard (edited by JA)
