Italian Graphic Design - (Studies in Design and Material Culture) by Chiara Barbieri (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book tells the story of graphic designers in Milan from the 1930s to the 1960s. Focusing on design education, everyday practice, organisational strategies, mediating channels and modernism, it contributes to our understanding of the role graphic design has played in the history of Italian visual culture.

Book Synopsis

Italian graphic design offers a new perspective on the subject by exploring the emergence and articulation of graphic design practice, from the interwar period through to the appearance of an international graphic design discourse in the 1960s.

The book asks how graphic designers learned their trade and investigates the ways in which they organised and made their practice visible while negotiating their collective identity with neighbouring practices such as typography, advertising and industrial design. Attention is drawn to everyday design practice, educational issues, mediating channels, networks, design exchange, organisational strategies and discourses on modernism.

Drawing on a wide range of primary sources and placing an emphasis on visual analysis, this book provides a model for a contextualised graphic design history as an integral part of the history of design and visual culture.

From the Back Cover

Italian graphic design explores the emergence and articulation of graphic design practice in Italy from the interwar period to the 1960s. It offers a much-needed critical and historical analysis of the role that graphic design has played in Italian design culture.

The book addresses the struggle of graphic designers to define their practice as they adapted to shifting political and cultural environments, as well as changing design discourses. It traces the lineage of graphic design back to typography, tackles its problematic relationship with advertising and reveals graphic designers' efforts to negotiate their professional identity with industrial designers. Presenting new evidence on Italian design during and following fascism, it addresses the grey area between alignment and resistance. A series of case studies brings to light neglected actors of Italian design in the vocational schools Scuola del Libro and Cooperativa Rinascita and the professional body Aiap, while also offering new perspectives on the Studio Boggeri, the Milan Triennale and the industrial design organisation ADI.

This book will serve as a standard reference for students from undergraduate level upwards, as well as scholars working on Italian design and cultural history and those interested in the development of graphic design internationally.

About the Author

Chiara Barbieri is a Researcher in Design History at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO)