The Arts

Italian graphic design

Culture and practice in Milan, 1930s-60s

by Chiara Barbieri

Description

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.

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Reviews

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. As such, it contributes to a more diverse, inclusive and contextualised understanding of Italian design and visual culture. Drawing attention to everyday design practices, education, networks, organisational strategies, mediating channels and discourses on modernism, the book addresses the struggle for graphic designers to define their practice and its adaptation 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 relation with advertising and addresses graphic designers' efforts to negotiate their professional identity with industrial designers. It problematises and shows new evidence on Italian design during and following fascism, addressing the grey area between alignment and resistance. A series of case studies brings to light neglected actors of Italian design: the vocational schools Scuola del Libro and Cooperativa Rinascita, and the professional body Aiap. They also offer new perspectives on protagonists of the historiographical canon: 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.

Author Biography

Chiara Barbieri is a Researcher in Design History at the University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO) and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland

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Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press is a leading UK publisher known for excellent research in the humanities and social sciences.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date July 2024
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526151131 / 1526151138
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPrint PDF
  • Pages272
  • ReadershipGeneral/trade
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions240 X 170 mm
  • Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 5257
  • SeriesStudies in Design and Material Culture
  • Reference Code13260

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