Per vederci chiaro – Gli occhiali e l'inventore inesistente (“Seeing clearly – Glasses and the non-existent inventor”) is an essay published by Nomos Edizioni. It investigates the origins of one of the most common objects in everyday life: glasses. The author, Renzo Dionigi, reconstructs the history of an invention that responded to a need for social and economic progress, revealing its multiple and sometimes controversial origins.

From the history of reading to the first lenses, from frames to the lexicography of the term “eyeglass”, the volume spans centuries of inventions, disputes and symbolic representations. With a preface by Luciano Perondi and Raimonda Riccini , the theme of legibility is intertwined with that of reading tools, while engravings and prints from 1400 to 1700 bring to light what was invisible or forgotten, between utility, art and memory.

The graphic design focuses on a typographic composition rich in detail and peculiarities, enhanced by the characteristics of the Sorella font – designed by Luis Castellón and published by CAST – which recalls the writing of the 18th-century calligrapher Angela Baroni. Scotus Sans, designed by Giulio Galli, Riccardo Olocco and Luciano Perondi, is used for footnotes and a few other minor details.

Duetuffi is an organic vermouth by Italian distillery Rubino Spiriti. From Andrea Castelletti Studio:

Duetuffi (literally “Two Dives”) narrates the encounter of two souls finding their unifying element in water. It is a vertical journey starting from the rarefied atmospheres of the pre-alpine lakes and descending to the scents of the Mediterranean scrub.

The visual identity draws upon early 20th-century imagery, stripping away nostalgia to present a contemporary synthesis. Rooting the project in time is the choice of substrate: Fasson Fleury Antique paper. Composed of recycled material, it transforms the organic nature of the product into a tactile experience, offering a lived-in texture and an imperfect depth that enhances the nobility of the content.

Typography moves across this material backdrop. The use of AM Majella lends the label an editorial elegance: its forms, inspired by tradition yet with a modern, incisive cut, balance the composition with a classical voice.

Center stage, the diver’s gesture. Her swimsuit is not ink, but absence. Thanks to precision die-cutting, the paper yields to transparency, revealing the natural rosy hue of the vermouth. A detail that becomes a visual invitation to slowness: a vermouth to be savoured with grace and a gentle rhythm.

On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione launched its new web app, a multimedia tool designed to enhance and expand the visitor experience.

Conceived as a 20-stage digital journey through the exhibition, the web app offers users an interactive guide enriched with audio content, descriptive texts, and historical documents. It is accessible free of charge via smartphone at app.tipoteca.it, whether used on-site for an independent visit or off-site to explore Tipoteca’s extensive archival collections.

This new tool features typefaces specifically developed for digital environments, inspired by the rich heritage of Italian typography. For its debut, the web app showcases Fabbrica, a typeface designed by Michele Patanè for CAST Foundry.

Tipoteca Italiana is a unique museum dedicated to the history and culture of type and printing. More than a traditional museum, it functions as a vibrant hub encompassing an archive, print shop, library, gallery, and auditorium. Through its exhibitions, workshops, and public programs, Tipoteca fosters dialogue between historical craftsmanship and contemporary design. It stands as Italy’s most important institution devoted to the art of letterpress and typographic heritage.

Ludo’s Van is a new food truck traveling the roads of central Italy, run by a woman who spent decades in the financial sector before making a radical life change. Its visual identity, designed by Demetrio Mancini, merges vibrancy with austerity, pairing a colorful geometric logo with a stark black-and-white type system based on Sole Sans Condensed by CAST Foundry.

Ludo's van texture

Ludo’s Van website

Ludo’s Van menu

Ludo’s Van apron

Ludo’s Van sign

The Municipality of Forlì has undertaken the cataloging of 300 photographic plates selected from the prestigious Edgardo Zoli Archive. This publication, the first volume in the ArchiviForlivesi series, presents 82 stunning images from that digitized collection. Introduced by three specialist essays by Marino Mambelli, Elisa Mengoli, and Fabrizio Monti, the book offers—for the first time—an in-depth look at the close relationship between the city, the photographer, and his renowned archive.

Edgardo Zoli was the official reporter of all local ceremonies during the Fascist regime, a fashionable portraitist, and a trusted reference for many companies. His work, deeply rooted in the economic and social life of the 1930s, provides a vivid visual narrative of Forlì’s productive landscape, captured through trade fairs, product catalogs, and carefully staged scenes.

This volume marks the start of a wider cultural project and serves as the public-facing element of an initiative that, through its extraordinary photographic material, offers a fresh and compelling perspective on Forlì’s industrial past.

Published by Nomos Edizioni.

What did it mean to wear a pearl? Or having a diamond ring?

Through the analysis of almost one hundred selected masterpieces in the Uffizi Galleries' collection, we discover how jewellery plays an important role in iconography, or simply enriches the moral description of the character. Other times, on the other hand, the jewel, by showing an execution that can be traced back to a precise place and environment, allows us to understand the cultural inclinations of a character or to place them geographically. Author Silvia Malaguzzi guides the reader to discover the language of jewellery thanks to a very rich harvest of images and the beauty of the detailed reproductions of many of the most famous works in the history of art.

Diamanti Rubini e Smeraldi (“Diamonds Rubies and Emeralds”) is published in Italian by Nomos Edizioni.

No More War is a retrospective of photographer Giles Duley’s work in EMERGENCY’s hospitals in Afghanistan and Iraq. From design studio +fortuna:

It is the personal account of a photographer who for decades documented and experienced the impact of war firsthand, to the point of being seriously injured by an explosive device. Kabul 2012, Mosul 2017 and Kabul 2021 recount Duley's journey through photographs and words from his diary, words written shortly before the Taliban took the city in 2021.

The exhibition project takes the visitor through an immersive journey, built from images, texts, audio, artwork and artistic contaminations, thanks to the contributions of Sibomana, Christina Balit, Emma Francis and Massive Attack. It presents itself as a means of information and reflection, becoming an important tool for understanding this universal story.
The design challenge was to find a way to let each story, each face, find its space, make its voice heard to ask in unison: no more war.

TAMEKO is a newborn brand of luxurious textiles resulting from the collaboration between the two Danish design experts Dominika Leveau and Chim Sonne-Schmidt. They create fabrics for bed, table, home and life. Their approach is to work with nature, allowing form to emerge from function.

The TAMEKO identity, designed by DutchScot, is based on the modular use of Xanti Typewriter to create pattern and textures. Inspired by typewriter art, they created a suite of typographic textiles emulating the raw, textural nature of the fabrics themselves.

Tameko pattern

TAMEKO packaging (Photographers: Irina Boersma César Machado; Styling: Merete Vyff)

TAMEKO copy (in collaboration with Nick Asbury)

TAMEKO packaging (Photographers: Irina Boersma César Machado; Styling: Merete Vyff)

Tameko pattern

Tameko pattern

Tameko pattern

The first Italian edition of the European Design Awards and Festival took place in Naples from 30 May to 2 June, with the partnership of AIAP (Italian Association of Visual communication). The visual identity sprang off from the collaboration between two Italian design practices. Naples-based studio Dotfog populated the identity with a series of bizarre figures taken from local history that evolves in infinite combinations, while Studio FM Milano worked on a theatrical representation of Naples inspired by the 18th-century postcards sold to the Grand Tour travelers from all over Europe. Three images based on the most traditional Neapolitan views were reconstructed, three bright colors (light blue, pink, orange) and three words were chosen (‘Volcanic’, ‘Tumultuous’ and ‘Sunny’).

Together with these design decisions, the choice of Roma Neue – practical, clean, legible, perfect for exhibition design and corporate identity – contributed to create a sort of visual tapestry able to express the essence of design and celebrate European culture.

Every year an ‘Italian Capital of Culture’ is chosen for its special cultural and urban heritage. And this year is the turn of the city of Pesaro. Under the theme “La natura della cultura” (“The nature of culture”), Pesaro 2024 explores the interaction of art, nature and technology by promoting collective work aimed at rethinking urban and rural space and revamping cultural heritage in situ. A broad programme of five themes has been devised which include 45 projects involving 50 municipalities, two regional parks and one protected area.

The visual identity of this complex event was worked out by Paper Paper studio. For continuous printed and on-screen text, they chose Giulio Galli’s Capraia, a seriffed book face in seven weights and matching italics. Among them, Book and Regular are specifically designed for long reading. Capraia is used alongside Aeonik.

Illustrations by Cristina Spanò.

President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, during the opening

Capraia in a very massive size

Giù nel blu. Dalla superficie agli abissi: viaggio sottomarino sfogliabile (Down in the blue. From the surface to the depths: a browsable submarine journey) is an illustrated book on the underwater world. Published by the Italian publisher Nomos, the book is written by Gianumberto Accinelli and illustrated by Giulia Zaffaroni.

The book is leafed through vertically and this action together with a metric scale and the color of the pages, gradually darker, gives the readers the idea of descending into the depths, encountering many animals especially in the first pages, leaving room for emptiness and darkness as you go further down, to the depths of the ocean.

The editor also published a sequel called Su nel blu (Up in the blue) which applies the same idea with a different navigation direction: you'll go from the ground up to the space.

Table of contents is organized as a preview of the descent into the sea

Some animal have a small presentation text

The final animal index

The cover of the sequel: Su nel Blu (Up in the blue)

The LVMH group (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) represents excellence in champagne, wines and spirits. The signage project for the new office building of Moët Hennessy in Paris is part of a larger project to design the group’s new workspaces. This additional language reflects the values of the House, enhances the Art Deco heritage of the site, and conceives a sustainable project that goes hand in hand with the architectural reflection for a cultural transformation of the company by proposing contemporary workspaces. Barbarito Bancel and +fortuna played with lightness using materials, shapes and languages to create a signage that guides and orients in a natural way, with its elegant presence.

The entire project uses Neon Nbl as typeface. It is a faithful digital redesign of the original geometric monocase sans designed by Giulio da Milano and released by Nebiolo in 1933–1934. This is a choice that perfectly reflect the Art Deco spirit of the building.

Magazine covers

The third printed issue of Outpump magazine was published five years after its inception as an online magazine. The print magazine counts issue 0 as its first issue. From designers Atto:

Outpump is a digital magazine born in 2016. It narrates the link between lifestyle and pop-culture, it tells about world of the sneakers, fashion, music and sport. It combines the power of the stories with a strong visual impact of the content.

The graphic design of this issue is coherent with the previous one: we combined a classic use of grids and typography and the desire to break the rules, the aim was to represent Outpump as its best.

We used pretty narrow margins and put some intentional mistakes. From Themerson's semantic poems we stole the constructions of the paragraphs and added a shining touch using the silver Pantone.

Magazine spines

Variazioni sul Silenzio (“Variations on silence”) was a student project made during Mauro Bubbico’s class at ISIA of Urbino, Italy, academic year 2019/2020.

The project is a study on Italy’s abandoned places which proposes an alternative perspective on the fetishist gaze often cast upon ruins. Images of these places taken from Google Maps, “god’s eye” that records everything in a nonjudgmental way, establish a visual and conceptual dialogue with images that belong to the realms of myth and metaphorical narration: they create an imaginative weave that looks at abandoned ruins as a tale-maker live matter.

Fulmar by Leo Philp is used throughout, in combination with Marr Sans (designed by Dave Foster and Paul Barnes).

Logotype development

Ar/Ge Kunst is a research and production space for the arts in Bolzano.

The name Ar/Ge Kunst is an abbreviation of the German word Arbeitsgemeinschaft (working group), which was chosen to promote the idea of collective work, and also has the meaning to unsettle (coming from the German word arge).

The Kunstverein aims to reinforce the collective aspect inherent in the name Ar/Ge Kunst as a research and production space for the arts, in which every new production forges a new working group of practitioners from different walks of life, to think through impending social, legal and artistic questions.

The entire identity is based on a very strict grid system: three rows, three languages, three headings, three columns across every media and every format.

Detail of the lettering on the cover

The Terrace of the Map Room in the Uffizi Gallery is an environment whose murals represent the geographical maps of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, painted in 1588 to 1589 by Ludovico Buti and Stefano Bonsignori, while the wooden ceiling was decorated with paintings by Jacopo Zucchi that were transported from the Palazzo Florence in Rome during 1588 at the behest of Ferdinando I.

This volume, published at the end of the restoration that brought to light the qualities of style and technical peculiarities, documents the genesis and reasons for the commissioning of the room, its collecting history and the events that have marked it over the centuries, to finally arrive at the current perspectives.

In over 370 images (the result of an ad hoc photographic campaign) and with the multi-disciplinary contribution of 30 authors, not only the historical and artistic events of the environment are presented but also the analytical documentation of all the restoration works that have allowed to return the Terrazzo to the public in all its original splendor.

Published in both Italian and English by Nomos Edizioni, this precious volume pairs Sole Sans with Rialto dF, recalling the italian renaissance with dropcaps at the beginnings of the chapters. On the cover, type is playing with the wall paintings creating different layers.

Cover

Front and back cover

Cover of Italian and English edition

Italian and English spines

Table of contents

Opening pages

Restoration section double page

Opening page detail

Restoration section detail

A prestigious fashion brand has dressed, with a personalized label and box, a bottle of award-winning oil from the Marche region. The typography pairs Alleanz Sans (CAST) with Nitti Typewriter (Bold Monday). The pattern is an illustration by Michele Rocchetti.

Cover

Sole Serif and Cera with Cera Round are the fonts in use for the redesigned Devoto Oli Junior dictionary. From Leftloft:

Among the bestseller Italian dictionary for children aged 8-13, Devoto Oli Junior’s rebranding included a new logo, a colourful, customizable cover, new typography, a responsive web app and a bunch of playful stickers to enjoy.

The purpose was to make the dictionary an enjoyable and easy-to-use tool closer to the language of its young users. So we created a playful visual design and a meta-language made of letters, symbols and emoticons in full colour to improve its usability.

Simplicity and playfulness are at the core of the project.

From the logo design, with its acronym DJ featuring a smiley, to the use of colours, from the custom icons that highlight special sections to the set of stickers beautifully illustrated by Nice Shit Studio.

Designed from the alphabetical glyphs, the stickers are now friendly emoticons that children can use to make each volume unique.

Headwords in colour, a complete alphabet on every page, and a set of illustrated icons highlighting special sections of the volume help children develop their vocabulary and understanding.

Alongside this friendly tool, we designed the go-to-website and its responsive web app.

Devoto Oli Junior is published by Le Monnier

Cover with stickers applied

Spread and stickers

Milano Graphic Festival, the first widespread event of graphic design, illustration and visual cultures, was held in Milan, 25–27 March 2022.

Milano Graphic Festival intends to be a catalyst for ideas and relations surrounding the world of visual communication. Its mission is to generate awareness and exchange, to shed light on an art that is all-encompassing and also to emphasise its fundamental role in the context of urban regeneration and its overall impact on citizen wellbeing.

Starting from a much needed reflection on the role and responsibilities of visual design, but always looking at its history, the mission of MGF – intended as both the festival and the typeface – is to build bridges and synergies between different worlds, always promoting inclusivity.

Designer Fabrizio Falcone – along with festival director Francesco Dondina – was looking for a display face evoking the international achievement of the Swiss Style and the golden age of Milanese graphic design. The result is MGF Sans, a display face somehow reminiscent of the 1960s Milan design scene.

The typographical cover of the book displays many faces in order to recall Bauhaus typography

A precise and previously unpublished archival research collects and reveals the biographical events of all the “girls” of the Bauhaus, the Bauhausmädels. Design historian Anty Pansera involves the reader by transporting them to the fascinating life inside the school where male and female students lived together with masters of the caliber of Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Kandinskij, Klee, and free time was shared between parties, readings, political discussions, love stories, exhibitions, artistic performances, music (Bauhaus had its own orchestra), sports; in the background, of course, the tragic rise of Nazism which led to the closure of the academy, the prohibition of practicing for artists, and which forced many of the women (more than 14% were of Jewish origin) to flee and exile, when not to death in a concentration camp.

Published by Nomos Edizioni in Italian, the book shows unpublished archive photos of the school and collects in an extensive infographic some data relating to the Bauhausmädels, while on the back cover and in the flaps there is a visual representation of when our protagonists took part in the life of the school.

The infographic on the flap and inside cover

Chapter openings