and last pages of a book" is the slogan proposed by Pascal Manry's advertising agency CLM BBDO for the launch of the collection. Without market research at the start, Pierre Marchand, a self-taught man, explained on the television programme : "This project was as old as my thirst for knowledge. No doubt it is necessary to be precisely self-taught to sense the importance of an encyclopaedia. We must have been forced to build our own culture, to seek reliable references, to make clear statements. To conceive 'Découvertes', I didn't need market research, surveys or tests. Right from the start, I wanted to give the public the books I needed." Although "Découvertes" was reserved for youth at the beginning, it was eventually launched for the general adult public. The collection then had a rapid-growth, 105 titles appeared in five years. The first international collaboration was started with the Madrid-based Spanish publisher in 1989, and 19 countries would finally be associated with the project. In 1992, after 151 titles have been published, Gallimard showed interest in the work on mermaid and Siren () by , a Belgian Dutch-language writer. Nevertheless, the Parisian publishing house hesitated, "interesting subject, but how can you illustrate that?" Then De Donder showed a list of about one thousand images that he gathered over years, Gallimard was convinced and made him the first non-French-language author published in the collection. In the heyday of "Découvertes" at the turn of the 1990s, authors were mainly recruited from academics and curators. Numerous artist monographs were often published on the occasions of major exhibitions, with a predilection for painters and musicians. Such as the title was released for the exhibition "Henri Matisse 1904–1917" at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1993; and Geneviève Haroche-Bouzinac's Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (from "Hors série") was on sale at the exhibit of Vigée Le Brun's paintings in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or reactivity in relation to current events, for instance, the title Sang pour sang, le réveil des vampires was published on 5 January 1993 for the release of Francis Coppola's Dracula in France; and () for the release of the French film Germinal; () for the bicentennial of the CNAM; () was on sale on the occasion of "Yves Saint Laurent retrospective" at the Petit Palais in 2010. Some works were launched within an extremely limited time frame, such as (),