[1] Excoffon was born in Marseille, studied law at the University of Aix-en-Provence, and then moved to Paris to apprentice in a print shop.
In 1947, he formed his own advertising agency and concurrently became design director of a small foundry in Marseille called Fonderie Olive.
Air France, one of Excoffon's largest and most prestigious clients, used a customized variant of Antique Olive in its wordmark and livery until 2009, when a new logo was introduced.
Excoffon's faces, even the sober Antique Olive, have an organic vibrancy not found in similar sans-serif types of the period.
[citation needed] He is a founding member of L’Académie nationale des arts de la rue (ANAR) created in 1975 with Jacques Dauphin, Maurice Cazeneuve, Paul Delouvrier, Georges Elgozy, Abraham Moles, and André Parinaud.