[1993#03] red green white
Red Green White
On Some Provincial Italian Graphic Designers
From The Cartellone To The Manifesto
Contemporary Italian “paper-on-the-wall” graphic design has its roots in a long tradition and good reputation of cartellonisti, the Italian word for French affichistes. Fruit of the XIX century lithographic revolution in the printing trade, the affiche explosion spread from France all over Europe in the last quarter of the past century, reaching Italy with great results, as demonstrated by the well-known production of the Officine Grafiche Ricordi in Milano (the first Italian printing office specialized in posters). In the first two decades of XXth century, the celebrated names of L. Metlicovitz, L. Cappiello, M. Dudovich, L.A. Mauzan, and also of the futurist F. Depero establish the reputation of Italy in the international poster scene. But in the 1930s/1940s the affiche begins its transformation in to a poster, with works such these of M. Nizzoli, Sepo, G. Boccasile and Studio Boggeri. The cartellone (affiche) artist becomes a manifesto (poster) designer, in other words, as the accent from endogenous expressive reasons evermore shifts to exogenous communicative needs. In the first two decades after the second world war, the italian poster design has its internationally recognized masters in A. Steiner, E. Carboni, G. Pintori, W. Ballmer, A. Testa, M. Huber, amongst others. So, it shows a peculiar Italo-Swiss hybridization and the leading role of Olivetti Corporate. The parabola of the cosmopolitan supremacy of Milan (industrial and then fashion) design reaches its climax in the 1960s/1970s passage, with characters in the graphic field as — inter alii — M. Vignelli, B. Noorda, M. Provinciali, that introduce to the 1980s climate, where emerge P. Cerri and I. Lupi, the names best representing now the establishment of Italian graphic design. In the same turn of the years, i.e. from the second-1970s, a new phenomenon appears in the Italian graphic design scene, in a strict connection with contemporary socio-political events. The so-called grafica di pubblica utilità (“public-profit” graphic design, a kind of socio-politically minded information design), that mainly expresses itself in posters, for more than a decade translates (or, a least, tries to) a new engagement of local, municipal, mainly peripherical public powers to achieve a new, different relationship with the citizens. The grafica di pubblica utilità so has the imprint of a communicative effort that directly aims responding at the lasting, chronic, guilty lack of interest of the Italian State apparatus and of its institutions for their image (current stamps and banknotes are enough evidences of that), and for a better, clear way of “speaking” to everyone (e.g., look at any Italian post-office or train-station, to leave out other places). Celebrated by an exhibition in Cattolica (1984) that should have been biennial but immediately aborted, the grafica di pubblica utilità Italian representatives, after the partecipation of some at the Beaubourg Images d’utilité publique exhibition in Paris (1988), draw up a widely diffused “manifesto”, the Carta del progetto grafico (1989), which in its avant-gardistic old fashioned commas offers seven theses on communication design. On the 1990s tresholds, the Carta so expresses a generous but late complaint, a somewhat anachronistic call for attention to the graphic designer profession most often mistook for advertising in common opinion, turning at the end to be an act of self-pity more than a critic appraisal of the present state-of-art.
The Last Decade: The Provincials
It is in this climate that we may to place (otherwise it would be easy to misunderstand) the youngest generation of Italian graphic designers, which crossed the harsh borders from the late 1970s “bullets years” of terrorism to the 1980s reaganian-hedonism era. Most of what has been done in this last decade by graphic offices of the few metropolitan centers of the peninsula, to be true, appears moderately interesting, usually honest, and often professionally correct but scarcely innovative and rarely experimental, apart few exceptions, and indeed generally not too much cultivated. (Where culture has here a wide meaning, and visual culture is supposed to be a designer natural need for looking around but also backwards). This attitude heavily contributed to the quick decadence and rapid loss of international prestige of the Italian graphic design, that well coupled with the lasting graphic unculture of the country and a consequent feeling of uselessness for graphic design, with the lack of public schools and the disinterest of the university, with the self-delegitimization of designers in unfair competitions and the bungles of professional associations. More and more, this kind of graphic designers seem simply preoccupied of fitting to the requests what they look it’s happening outside Italy, or simply outside their doors. It appears that they have been merely repeating safe solutions, in a word: to be trendy but-not-too-much and just-after-a-while. Far more interesting, in this hazy panorama, is the contribution that comes from some Italian provincial towns. The center/periphery dialectic that distinguish the policentric culture of Italy since ancient times, gives also in this case its fruits. The dramatic and, in a sense, apocalyptic end of the 1980s brings to our troubled present, to the uncertain, grey beginnings of the 1990s, the times the Italian first Republic crisis has reached its climax. This is the scene where act the poster designers of four different provincial towns, choosed as emblematic of the contemporary Italian scene.
The Dolcini associati of Pesaro
Pupil of A. Steiner and M. Provinciali, from the beginning of his career Massimo Dolcini has been the leader of the full-range visual design office Fuorischema, then M&M (since 1985), now Dolcini associati (since 1991) in Pesaro, a town of 90.000 inhabitants on the Adriatic coast, not far from Urbino. His recognizable style of posters, humorous and contextual, playful and varied, strongly influenced the grafica di pubblica utilità researches, where Dolcini has been a protagonist. In its 1990s posters, the violent semplification of forms into rough actual (often black contour) signs, the preference for backgrounds of brilliantly chosen flat colours, the functional subordination of lettering show the continuity of his inclination towards a modern vernacular. If this attitude seems to dominate the office production, as his-master-mark, there coexist also attempts to get more sofisticated iconic involvments, and to play with the message and the (type)faces callings.
The Graphiti of Florence
The Graphiti office operates since 1983 in Florence, the less than half-a-million people capital of Tuscany, one of the extraordinary Italian “towns of art”. The work of the partners Andrea Rauch, Stefano Rovai, Walter Sardonini ranges from visual to book design, from exhibition to stage design but keeps his roots (as for Dolcini Associati) in the experiences of the grafica di pubblica utilità. The variegate poster production of Graphiti in the 1990s confirm and deepens the diverging approaches of office founders Rauch and Rovai, that instead seem trying to cohabit in the Sardonini works. The calli-graphic, illustrative, self-indulgent hand of Rauch is clearly recognizable in pen-and-ink drawings, on very simple backgrounds; while the photo-graphic eye of Rovai likes the perceptive complication and the image fragmentation, ending in syncopated montages of pictures and words.
The Camuffo Design of Venice
Giorgio Camuffo career as indipendent graphic designer in Venice, another extraordinary Italian “town of art” of about 70.000 citizens, begins in the mid-1980s, enrichened by collaborations with G. Cittato, F. Giacometti, P. Cerri. Promoter of successful cultural initiatives as the Pacific Wave exhibition on Californian graphic design (1987), Camuffo Design — particularly appreciated in the field of corporate image — associate Sebastiano Girardi and Massimo De Luca to the principal. The 1990s poster production of Camuffo proves a peaceful presence of two souls in his work, which represent both the cartellone and the manifesto historical opposite trends. One soul, of intuitive contemporarity, mainly attempts a cool play with the 4-colours basic of the printing, resulting in simplified framing of essential images but also in dissonant chromatic deflagrations of signs. The other soul, of emotional freshness, explores an exhilarating attraction for an infantile, hyper-comics language, making of information design a colourful, narrative game.
The Tassinari/Vetta associati of Trieste
Trieste, the most Eastern Italian town, once the main harbour of Austro-Hungarian Empire on Adriatic sea, within its nearly 250.000 inhabitants counts also the Tassinari/Vetta associati founders, Pierpaolo Vetta and Paolo Tassinari. The graphic design office established in the 1980s, specializing in corporate image, exhibition and book design. Their recent poster production reveals both a refined constructive eclecticism (rooted on a intimate knowledge of XXth century visual arts and avant-gardes) and a perceptive habits mastery, both a deliberate challenge to the image-coordination concept in itself and a peculiar attempt to articulate the poster “language”. In the more-than-one poster sets, each one in fact is a self-sufficient “word” but the set syntax articulates the whole as a “sentence”, opening an original perspective in poster design.
Where Have All The Posters Gone?
As a conclusion, temporary has to be presumed, reamains the sad ascertainment that since some years posters have begun to disappear from the walls, the streets and the squares of Italy, in favour of other media, more aggressively focused on persuasive goals. As a matter of fact, the poster is an inheritance of the past, an extreme permanence of the Gutenberg revolution after centuries, but also a communicative goods so widely appreciated in the contemporary world, to the extent of being auction and collection item. To understand and to “protect” the poster (as a mark of our civilization), any nostalgic feelings will not help but only a critical approach, oriented to merciless analyze the graphic design process as a whole, and to preserve the traces of history, through the investigation on the links between social mentalities and creative characters, besides the reconstruction of individual careers and the identification of masterworks.
On Some Provincial Italian Graphic Designers
From The Cartellone To The Manifesto
Contemporary Italian “paper-on-the-wall” graphic design has its roots in a long tradition and good reputation of cartellonisti, the Italian word for French affichistes. Fruit of the XIX century lithographic revolution in the printing trade, the affiche explosion spread from France all over Europe in the last quarter of the past century, reaching Italy with great results, as demonstrated by the well-known production of the Officine Grafiche Ricordi in Milano (the first Italian printing office specialized in posters). In the first two decades of XXth century, the celebrated names of L. Metlicovitz, L. Cappiello, M. Dudovich, L.A. Mauzan, and also of the futurist F. Depero establish the reputation of Italy in the international poster scene. But in the 1930s/1940s the affiche begins its transformation in to a poster, with works such these of M. Nizzoli, Sepo, G. Boccasile and Studio Boggeri. The cartellone (affiche) artist becomes a manifesto (poster) designer, in other words, as the accent from endogenous expressive reasons evermore shifts to exogenous communicative needs. In the first two decades after the second world war, the italian poster design has its internationally recognized masters in A. Steiner, E. Carboni, G. Pintori, W. Ballmer, A. Testa, M. Huber, amongst others. So, it shows a peculiar Italo-Swiss hybridization and the leading role of Olivetti Corporate. The parabola of the cosmopolitan supremacy of Milan (industrial and then fashion) design reaches its climax in the 1960s/1970s passage, with characters in the graphic field as — inter alii — M. Vignelli, B. Noorda, M. Provinciali, that introduce to the 1980s climate, where emerge P. Cerri and I. Lupi, the names best representing now the establishment of Italian graphic design. In the same turn of the years, i.e. from the second-1970s, a new phenomenon appears in the Italian graphic design scene, in a strict connection with contemporary socio-political events. The so-called grafica di pubblica utilità (“public-profit” graphic design, a kind of socio-politically minded information design), that mainly expresses itself in posters, for more than a decade translates (or, a least, tries to) a new engagement of local, municipal, mainly peripherical public powers to achieve a new, different relationship with the citizens. The grafica di pubblica utilità so has the imprint of a communicative effort that directly aims responding at the lasting, chronic, guilty lack of interest of the Italian State apparatus and of its institutions for their image (current stamps and banknotes are enough evidences of that), and for a better, clear way of “speaking” to everyone (e.g., look at any Italian post-office or train-station, to leave out other places). Celebrated by an exhibition in Cattolica (1984) that should have been biennial but immediately aborted, the grafica di pubblica utilità Italian representatives, after the partecipation of some at the Beaubourg Images d’utilité publique exhibition in Paris (1988), draw up a widely diffused “manifesto”, the Carta del progetto grafico (1989), which in its avant-gardistic old fashioned commas offers seven theses on communication design. On the 1990s tresholds, the Carta so expresses a generous but late complaint, a somewhat anachronistic call for attention to the graphic designer profession most often mistook for advertising in common opinion, turning at the end to be an act of self-pity more than a critic appraisal of the present state-of-art.
The Last Decade: The Provincials
It is in this climate that we may to place (otherwise it would be easy to misunderstand) the youngest generation of Italian graphic designers, which crossed the harsh borders from the late 1970s “bullets years” of terrorism to the 1980s reaganian-hedonism era. Most of what has been done in this last decade by graphic offices of the few metropolitan centers of the peninsula, to be true, appears moderately interesting, usually honest, and often professionally correct but scarcely innovative and rarely experimental, apart few exceptions, and indeed generally not too much cultivated. (Where culture has here a wide meaning, and visual culture is supposed to be a designer natural need for looking around but also backwards). This attitude heavily contributed to the quick decadence and rapid loss of international prestige of the Italian graphic design, that well coupled with the lasting graphic unculture of the country and a consequent feeling of uselessness for graphic design, with the lack of public schools and the disinterest of the university, with the self-delegitimization of designers in unfair competitions and the bungles of professional associations. More and more, this kind of graphic designers seem simply preoccupied of fitting to the requests what they look it’s happening outside Italy, or simply outside their doors. It appears that they have been merely repeating safe solutions, in a word: to be trendy but-not-too-much and just-after-a-while. Far more interesting, in this hazy panorama, is the contribution that comes from some Italian provincial towns. The center/periphery dialectic that distinguish the policentric culture of Italy since ancient times, gives also in this case its fruits. The dramatic and, in a sense, apocalyptic end of the 1980s brings to our troubled present, to the uncertain, grey beginnings of the 1990s, the times the Italian first Republic crisis has reached its climax. This is the scene where act the poster designers of four different provincial towns, choosed as emblematic of the contemporary Italian scene.
The Dolcini associati of Pesaro
Pupil of A. Steiner and M. Provinciali, from the beginning of his career Massimo Dolcini has been the leader of the full-range visual design office Fuorischema, then M&M (since 1985), now Dolcini associati (since 1991) in Pesaro, a town of 90.000 inhabitants on the Adriatic coast, not far from Urbino. His recognizable style of posters, humorous and contextual, playful and varied, strongly influenced the grafica di pubblica utilità researches, where Dolcini has been a protagonist. In its 1990s posters, the violent semplification of forms into rough actual (often black contour) signs, the preference for backgrounds of brilliantly chosen flat colours, the functional subordination of lettering show the continuity of his inclination towards a modern vernacular. If this attitude seems to dominate the office production, as his-master-mark, there coexist also attempts to get more sofisticated iconic involvments, and to play with the message and the (type)faces callings.
The Graphiti of Florence
The Graphiti office operates since 1983 in Florence, the less than half-a-million people capital of Tuscany, one of the extraordinary Italian “towns of art”. The work of the partners Andrea Rauch, Stefano Rovai, Walter Sardonini ranges from visual to book design, from exhibition to stage design but keeps his roots (as for Dolcini Associati) in the experiences of the grafica di pubblica utilità. The variegate poster production of Graphiti in the 1990s confirm and deepens the diverging approaches of office founders Rauch and Rovai, that instead seem trying to cohabit in the Sardonini works. The calli-graphic, illustrative, self-indulgent hand of Rauch is clearly recognizable in pen-and-ink drawings, on very simple backgrounds; while the photo-graphic eye of Rovai likes the perceptive complication and the image fragmentation, ending in syncopated montages of pictures and words.
The Camuffo Design of Venice
Giorgio Camuffo career as indipendent graphic designer in Venice, another extraordinary Italian “town of art” of about 70.000 citizens, begins in the mid-1980s, enrichened by collaborations with G. Cittato, F. Giacometti, P. Cerri. Promoter of successful cultural initiatives as the Pacific Wave exhibition on Californian graphic design (1987), Camuffo Design — particularly appreciated in the field of corporate image — associate Sebastiano Girardi and Massimo De Luca to the principal. The 1990s poster production of Camuffo proves a peaceful presence of two souls in his work, which represent both the cartellone and the manifesto historical opposite trends. One soul, of intuitive contemporarity, mainly attempts a cool play with the 4-colours basic of the printing, resulting in simplified framing of essential images but also in dissonant chromatic deflagrations of signs. The other soul, of emotional freshness, explores an exhilarating attraction for an infantile, hyper-comics language, making of information design a colourful, narrative game.
The Tassinari/Vetta associati of Trieste
Trieste, the most Eastern Italian town, once the main harbour of Austro-Hungarian Empire on Adriatic sea, within its nearly 250.000 inhabitants counts also the Tassinari/Vetta associati founders, Pierpaolo Vetta and Paolo Tassinari. The graphic design office established in the 1980s, specializing in corporate image, exhibition and book design. Their recent poster production reveals both a refined constructive eclecticism (rooted on a intimate knowledge of XXth century visual arts and avant-gardes) and a perceptive habits mastery, both a deliberate challenge to the image-coordination concept in itself and a peculiar attempt to articulate the poster “language”. In the more-than-one poster sets, each one in fact is a self-sufficient “word” but the set syntax articulates the whole as a “sentence”, opening an original perspective in poster design.
Where Have All The Posters Gone?
As a conclusion, temporary has to be presumed, reamains the sad ascertainment that since some years posters have begun to disappear from the walls, the streets and the squares of Italy, in favour of other media, more aggressively focused on persuasive goals. As a matter of fact, the poster is an inheritance of the past, an extreme permanence of the Gutenberg revolution after centuries, but also a communicative goods so widely appreciated in the contemporary world, to the extent of being auction and collection item. To understand and to “protect” the poster (as a mark of our civilization), any nostalgic feelings will not help but only a critical approach, oriented to merciless analyze the graphic design process as a whole, and to preserve the traces of history, through the investigation on the links between social mentalities and creative characters, besides the reconstruction of individual careers and the identification of masterworks.
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