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, astronomical computation and a star catalogue for star charts. Every poster is generated on-the-fly, faithful to the millimeter and the minute.
Who we are
Birth to Wall 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 4 styles in the catalog: Fine line, Watercolour, Starry night and Typographic.
Our business: designing, building and operating a web app that turns the data of an event (date, time, place) into a printed poster, birth announcement cards, a nursery triptych or a growth chart. 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 — fine strokes for Fine line, colour washes for Watercolour, light lines on a night background for Starry night.
For the starry sky, the position of stars and constellations above the chosen place at the exact minute is computed with the astronomy-engine library and a naked-eye star catalogue (Yale Bright Star Catalog). The render is artistic — star sizes by magnitude, optional constellation lines — but the positions are astronomically true, verifiable with any astronomy software.
No generative AI in the loop: every poster is deterministic — the same inputs always produce the same poster. The editor preview and the print file (a 300 DPI PDF sent to the printer) come from the same rendering engine: what you see is what gets printed.
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 14 (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 + Yale Bright Star Catalog. Rendering: in-house engine, 300 DPI PDF print file assembled with pdf-lib. 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 4 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, astronomical computation for skies). No AI-generated images in the loop: the same inputs always give the same poster.
- 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. Posters are printed in Europe on 200 g/m² matte paper.
- 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 4 styles and the print pipeline stay proprietary.