Studio | Christopher Lee Sauvé

The hand behind the work. Lettering, illustration and pattern for brands, plus the process and experiments behind it.

The studio, in motionCut from the films on this page

IFor brands

Lettering & illustration

Drawn by hand, for brands. Every word on a window, every character on a tee, every repeat on a box.

Select a piece to see the project

Steve Madden hand-lettered manifesto — Fight the Power, Steve Madden

Drawn by hand

The hand165 pieces, drawn in Procreate. No fonts.

“A new way of seeing things”, hand-lettered

Still drawing

The doodles134 drawings, 86 of them move. Hover one.

Pinned upInspiration, not my work

Pinned
up.

NYC club flyers, 1988 to 1999
Crass and Poison Girls
Stephen Sprouse, 99 Wooster
Save the Robots

IIMaking

Process

Fabergé, MadMaus and the brush. How the work gets made, by hand.

Fabergé, 2014

Egg 28 for the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt in New York, April 2014. More than 250 artist eggs were hidden across the five boroughs, shown together at Rockefeller Center and auctioned at Sotheby’s for Elephant Family and Studio in a School. Mine was a MadMaus egg, collaged by hand from the label’s own graphics: punk zine cut-and-paste crossed with Mickey Mouse.

My #madmaus design was chosen by #fabergeegghunt in NYC!

Instagram, March 12, 2014

Christopher Lee Sauvé with the finished egg in front of a wall of MadMaus prints — With the egg and the MadMaus wall

The finished MadMaus egg on its black marble plinth — Egg 28, finished

The egg, start to finish

Fabergé eggs on black plinths lined up on the Rockefeller Center plaza — All 250 eggs at Rockefeller Center · Photo: Millefiori Favoriti

MadMaus, 2013 to 2014

My own label, made by hand: screens pulled one at a time, paint on the floor, and an installation at Hotel Particulier.

Silkscreen

Painting day

The installation, 2013

The print shop, presses and screens — At the print shop

A crate of MadMaus screens — The screens

Painting on the floor under MadMaus prints — On the floor

The pattern, animated

MadMaus, animated

By hand

Brush and ink first, every time.

Painting day, brush lettering

Brush and ink on the desk: painting type — Painting type

IIICollaboration

With Scooter LaForge

Painting side by side with the New York artist: a show, a campaign and a run of hand-painted tees.

MADMAUS, 2014

Scooter LaForge x Christopher Lee Sauvé, a show at Hotel Particulier in February 2014. We painted the gallery together over two days, then released a limited edition of ten tees, hand silkscreened and painted by the two of us. I designed the show posters.

MADMAUS show poster: Scooter LaForge x Christopher Lee Sauvé, opens February 4, 2014, Hotel Particulier — The poster

Tonight! MADMAUS, the opening night poster — Opening night

Painting day one

Painting day two

Scooter LaForge and Christopher Lee Sauvé in front of a painted MadMaus wall — Side by side

Painting on the gallery floor — On the floor

The painted canvas going up — The install

The hand-painted tees laid out in the gallery — The tees in the gallery

The campaign, 2014

MadMaus campaign, photographed and filmed by Christopher Logan. Art direction by me, paintings by Scooter LaForge and me.

MadMaus campaign: model in a MadMaus tee in front of the painted wall — Campaign

MadMaus campaign: model in a Mickey tee and red shorts — Campaign

The tees, in motion

The tees

Printed, then painted over by hand, one at a time, by Scooter and me together.

Hand-painted tee: Punk’s Not Dead — Punk’s Not Dead

Hand-painted tee: Klaus Nomi in sunglasses — Klaus Nomi

Hand-painted tee: McQueen with a cross and roses — McQueen

Model in the Klaus Nomi tee — Klaus, worn

Scooter LaForge and Christopher Lee Sauvé in front of a big painted canvas, 2015 — Painting together, 2015

Scooter LaForge’s pen drawing of Christopher Lee Sauvé — Scooter’s drawing of me, 2013

Painting a canvas on the floor, from above — Painting session

IVMoving

In motion

Lettering and drawings, animated for social.

The wordmark, in motion. 17 seconds.

Kenneth Cole lettering

Bulova lettering

Painted portrait

VZine

Mirror Mind

My lettering and paint over every page of a zine about a beauty cult and its late night TV station.

No. 143, animated

Mirror Mind, No. 141: a woman dancing in a club under orange marker strokes, After Dark in white script — No. 141

Mirror Mind, No. 171: a dancer in a black suit, Brooklyn in black brush script up the side, an arrow and marker dashes — No. 171

Couture II, 10: a man in a pink suit, love in huge black script, a blue arrow and a heart — Couture II, 10

See the zine →

VI2026

Lab

Collage portraits made with AI image tools.

The lab

Collage portraits made with AI image tools in 2026. The same eye, a new pair of scissors. Signed and dated like everything else.

AI collage portrait over a diagram background

AI collage portrait with icons and a yellow pocket square

AI collage portrait, face covered by a strip of type

AI collage portrait in a black turtleneck

AI collage portrait with spiral eyes and a constellation chart

AI collage portrait in a tuxedo over a drawn pattern

VIIThe room

Where it gets made

Paint on the floor, cards drying on the mat, scissors close by.

Painting on the studio floor — The floor / The desk

Hand-lettered cards drying on the cutting mat — The floor / The desk

A wall of one-line ink face studies — Ink faces

In a MadMaus print in front of painted records — In the MadMaus print

Paint pots, markers and brushes on the desk — The paint table

A wall of type posters and tear sheets — The poster wall

A collage wall of drawings, polaroids and type — The collage wall

Painting Wonder Woman for DVF in the Bushwick studio, 2008 — Bushwick, 2008

LOVE, painted type, signed Sauvé — LOVE, painted

A wall of sticky notes and references — The moodboard wall

Painted alphabet, 2017

For Project LOVE I painted a whole alphabet with one brush: every capital, two to five takes of each letter so no two words repeat, and the figures. The LOVE above is set in it.

Sauvé Paint, the font, 2026A to Z, figures, three takes of every letter

SAUVÉ PAINT

LOVE IS A VERB. TYPE HERE

Download Sauvé Paint, free (OTF) ↓

I turned the 2017 alphabet into a working font. Every painted take is kept, and the font rotates through them, so a word never repeats a letter shape twice in a row.

The painted alphabet, black on white: every capital in two to five versions, the figures, dots and dashes — Black on white

The painted alphabet, white on black — White on black

Lettering the Studio Sauvé wordmark in ink.

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