The studio
A design studio, not an image generator.
Birth to Wall isn't a generative-AI platform inventing plausible maps. It's a studio that spent months coding a precise vector renderer from open data — OpenStreetMap for maps, Hipparcos ephemerides for star charts. Every poster is generated on-the-fly, faithful to the millimeter and the minute.
Who we are
Birth to Wall (in French: Carte Naissance) is operated by Group Xclusif, a French SAS founded in 2026 by Frédéric Roussille, a Paris-based designer and developer. The studio now has a small team of designers and front-end engineers collaborating on the 14 editorial styles in the catalog.
Our business: designing, building and operating a web app that turns the data of an event (date, time, place) into a high-definition printable poster. Our craft isn't print itself — that's delegated to Gelato, the European print-on-demand leader. Our craft is editorial design and precise vector rendering.
How each poster is generated
When you enter a city in the editor, the app queries OpenStreetMap's Nominatim API live to get exact GPS coordinates, then the Overpass API to extract the vector geometry of streets, parks, rivers and buildings in the chosen neighborhood. That geometry is then restyled to SVG according to the chosen style — thin lines and serif for Art Nouveau, thick strokes and rigid grid for Berlin Techno, etc.
For the Sky theme, the position of stars, planets and constellations above the chosen place at the exact minute is computed via the astronomy-engine library and Hipparcos ephemerides. The render is artistic — star sizes by magnitude, optional constellation lines — but the positions are astronomically true, verifiable with any astronomy software.
All this computation happens server-side in under 2 seconds. No generative AI in the loop: every poster is deterministic — the same inputs always produce the same poster, which guarantees that a PDF bought today will be reprintable identically in 10 years.
Why we built this studio
Because the personalized-poster market is saturated with generic images. Mapiful, Posterhaste, dozens of Etsy apps — all use the same templates with a swappable « name » variable. The result: a gift that screams « ordered online » from 10 meters away.
Birth to Wall started on the opposite premise: if the gift carries the exact maternity address, the precise birth time and an astronomically correct sky, then the recipient feels something different — the sense that you took the time to find something unique for them. The engineering cost is higher; so is the experience received.
Our tech stack (for the curious)
App: Next.js 15 (App Router, React Server Components) hosted on Vercel, Europe region. Database and auth: Supabase, Ireland hosting. Payment: Stripe, PCI-DSS certified. Print: Gelato, factory closest to recipient to minimize carbon footprint. Transactional emails: Resend.
Maps: OpenStreetMap via Nominatim + Overpass. Astronomy: astronomy-engine + Hipparcos catalog. Poster renderer: hybrid-vector SVG exported as 300 DPI PDF via Satori and @react-pdf/renderer. Open-source code for generic bricks (maps, skies) — the app itself stays proprietary.
Compliance and guarantees
Full GDPR compliance: data you enter (name, city, etc.) is used only to compose the poster. No resale, no cross-referencing, no non-consented marketing cookies. You can request access, portability or deletion at any time at frederic@groupxclusif.com.
Quality guarantee: live preview in the editor (« what you see is what gets printed »), 24-hour post-payment editing window, free reprint if the parcel arrives damaged (reported within 14 days). Under article L221-28 3° of the French Consumer Code, the standard withdrawal right doesn't apply to personalized posters — hence our extended guarantees.
Questions about the Birth to Wall studio
Everything useful to understand who does what, how, and why.
- Who's behind Birth to Wall?
- Birth to Wall is operated by Group Xclusif, a French company founded in Paris in 2026 by Frédéric Roussille, designer and developer. A small team of designers and engineers works on the 14 editorial styles in the catalog.
- Does Birth to Wall use generative AI for its posters?
- No. Every poster is deterministic: generated by a vector rendering engine from real data (OpenStreetMap for maps, Hipparcos ephemerides for skies). No AI-generated images in the loop — which guarantees that a poster bought today will be reprintable identically in 10 years.
- Where are the posters printed?
- Printing is operated by Gelato, European leader in print-on-demand, which routes the order to the factory closest to the recipient to minimize carbon footprint. For France, printing happens in Lyon or Strasbourg. 200 g/m² FSC-certified matte paper, 6-color giclée inks.
- Where is personal data stored?
- On Supabase (database + auth), Ireland hosting. The app is served by Vercel, Europe region. Payment handled by Stripe (PCI-DSS). Transactional emails via Resend. No data is transferred outside the EU. Full GDPR compliance.
- How can I contact the Birth to Wall team?
- For commercial or support questions: hello@birthtowall.com (reply within 48 business hours). For press, partnerships or GDPR: frederic@groupxclusif.com. Postal address and full legal coordinates on the Legal page.
- Does Birth to Wall open-source its code?
- Generic bricks (OSM parsing, star chart rendering, map helpers) are published as open source on the Group Xclusif GitHub as they mature. The web app itself, the 14 editorial styles and the PDF export pipeline stay proprietary.