Via Giovanni da Udine, 45
GO TO MAPS
Signs/contemporary italian graphic design is an authorial exhibition that offers a distinct selection of Italian graphic designers of different ages, cultures, education, and languages each time. The exhibition is a dialogue between different worlds that reflect on the different souls of the graphic designer's work, where differences are a cultural value. The authors/studios selected for the 2024 edition are: Laura Bortoloni/Ida Studio, Cappelli Identity Design, Fabrizio Falcone, Federica Fragapane, Francesco Franchi, Alice Guarnieri, jekyll & hyde, LS Graphic Design, Quattrolinee, Susanna Vallebona/Esseblu, Multiplo, VZN Studio.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Library music albums are mainly unknown to the big public, but they have existed since the end of the 1930s, and in between their grooves, they hosted excellent composers and musicians; we are talking about theme music produced for TV and radio to provide all kinds of background music for various scopes - the score for a documentary, a radio drama or a commercial - without having to compose a soundtrack on purpose. Since these vinyl records were not on the market, their unavailability made them some of the most memorable collectibles. However, another feature is more obscure and exciting, and it concerns the graphics on the covers: there is no specific set of images for this kind of music, and one has to create it from scratch. In these records, the freedom of composition is unlimited, both from a musical and a graphic point of view. From the musical standpoint, only the general theme is often established from the beginning. From a graphic perspective, some series present basic graphics, where the only element changing is the title or the color; others present extremely whimsical and creative graphics to the limit of imagination. Luca Barcellona, a calligrapher and inveterate collector, selects and shows 100 of his collection's best and most representative library music covers to reveal the solid graphic and visual impact of these masterpieces.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Bob Noorda, an urban graphic designer
The exhibition - curated by Francesco Dondina and Catharin Noorda - is realised thanks to the support of Grafiche Milani which, on the occasion of its centenary in 2006, received an important graphic contribution from the famous designer, author of the company's logo. The project is a tribute to the great Dutch master and to one of the most important urban signage projects of all time. In fact, the line 1 of the Milano metro, designed in the late 1950s by Franco Albini and Franca Helg with graphics by Bob Noorda, remains a masterful example of functional architecture and directional graphics more than sixty years later.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
All designers have some life-long sorrows. Projects that have been commissioned, created, and cared for with professionalism but never realized and thus perceived as 'incomplete'. I am talking about visual projects in which creativity and complexity highlight the concept of 'design' - in the English sense of the term. Typically, these incompletes result from imprecise briefings or cultural divergences with our interlocutors; sometimes, design undergoes several bureaucratic passages within the companies, whereby the different opinions erode the initial project, depreciating it and making it feel less 'ours'. Other times, these projects remain incomplete for external reasons. A significant example of deep 'sorrow' is the brand Bob Noorda created for the Milan Subway: an 'incomplete' for the author, the world of graphic design, and the city of Milan.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
The sea as a craftsman
From the sea to Helmut Newton and back through sixteen illustrated carpets.
Bruno Munari wrote in The sea as a craftsman: «You throw something in the sea, and the sea (after an unknown and indeterminable time) will give it back to you carved, finished, smooth, polished or opaque, depending on the material, and also wet because the colors are more intense (...). It makes only unparalleled and unique pieces, just like artworks». Luca Barcellona, Francesca Bazzurro e Luciana Meazza, Beppe Giacobbe, Valentina Grilli, Guido Scarabottolo, Carlo Stanga, Michele Tranquillini, and Francesca Zoboli created large artworks on scraps taken from the fitted carpet used for the Helmut Newton Legacy exhibition (Palazzo Reale, Milano, 2023). The carpet was originally produced by recycling plastic pollution from the Mediterranean. From the original 1.300 square meters, 1.000 were recycled on the market, 100 were recycled and 200 were given to the artists who turned them into works of art.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Neologia is a project curated by Graphic Days® that promotes a network of young talents in the landscape of Italian visual communication. Designers and visual designers between 18 and 30 are invited to present their most representative, innovative, experimental project, characterized by the contamination of styles and languages, to create a dynamic observatory for quality and innovation in the visual world.
The observatory is structured in three categories: Motion Graphic – GIF, Poster Design, and Editorial Design. In the 2024 edition, the AI category was added. Poster design and motion graphic projects can be realized using artificial intelligence and presented in the dedicated section.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
The exhibition features works selected and awarded in the fifth edition of the international award Aiap Women in Design Award, focusing on AWDA for Rights! and based on projects that address social themes such as women's rights, women's employment, and gender inequality and explore the political power of design. In a designated space, we will meet designers, researchers, and activists daily to expand the network.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Ilio Negri. No to civilisation if this is civilisation
The exhibition is dedicated to Ilio Negri's contribution to social graphic design. The complete series of 13 posters addressing the themes of progressive environmental decline, from pollution to overpopulation and destruction of animal species, exhibited for the first time at the Biennale di Rimini in 1970, will be displayed again. These themes, still extraordinarily relevant today, will be presented after over fifty years as an homage to one of the prominent masters of graphic design who prematurely passed away in 1974.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Wayfinding and public spaces
The exhibition displays the tables of directional signage/wayfinding designed by the students of the three-year course in Graphic Design and Art Direction of NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, guided by Professor Luca Ferreccio for the classes of Brand Design and Future Scenarios, with Patrizia Moschella, Communication and Graphic Design Area Leader. Despite the attention to inclusivity policies, there are still evident planning gaps addressed in the classes, which aim to create new best practices in communication and accessibility.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Armando Milani is constantly engaged in encouraging public interest in global social problems, such as war, pollution, and deforestation, through posters with a significant impact collected under the name Eco-Humanity.
Eco-Humanity is a work without a specific client that confronts—sooner than others—social, environmental, and public criticism themes through a unique sensibility expressed with simple but powerful images and graphic messages. The focus is on humanity's future from the point of view of the macro challenges it will face.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Fight for Kindness is a global initiative TypeCampus that invites designers to promote kindness-related values through typographic messages. After winning significant awards in its debut year, the project is now in its third edition, attracting the attention of the international design community. A collection of over 300 posters has been designed by well-known names in the design community, emerging talents, educators, and creators worldwide, to celebrate typography as a transformative tool for a better world. A selection of the posters has been included in the publication "Posters for Human Kind," the annual edition of 2023, which features over 180 visual artists along with an introduction on the role of typographic message in contemporary society by Debora Manetti and Shrishti Vajpai, authors and curators of the project. Among the artworks authors: Tina Touli, Leonardoworx, David John Walker, Rachel Denti, Nathan Bell, Momentum Worldwide Canada, Ibrahim Zaiki, Nikolaas Kotzé, Wedzicka, and others.
The works selected from the editions of Fight for Kindness are subject to a global, simultaneous, and multi-location exhibition to celebrate World Kindness Day on November 13th. The non-profit project is sponsored by the Italian type foundry Zetafonts along with prominent partners such as Type Directors Club, D&AD, ADCI, Art Directors Club of Europe (now part of The One Club), OFFF Festival, Print Mag, Slanted, Art &Found, Aiap AWDA, Typeroom, C2A, Indigo Awards, Communication Arts, DNA Paris, People of Print, and others. The new call is open. Deadline: May 31, 2024.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
School of Non-Knowledge Exhibition
Bringing together projects from thirty different universities, design schools and design groups from all over the world, the Scuola del Non Sapere exhibition at BIG, Biennale Internazionale Grafica, is a small extract from this enormous confrontation with all the things we don't know, what we don't want to know, and what we have voluntarily or involuntarily forgotten. At a time when the world's leaders continue to assert that they don't know, it's up to designers to make these uncertainties intelligible, as well as to reveal these pretenses, to represent them, to make them explicit, and to consider them as a necessary basis for any truly democratic debate, as well as for any creation. The exposition presents several of this pedagogical panels done by the students of Communication and Graphic Design Area of NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.
https://civic-city.org/nonsapere/
Curated by the Communication and Graphic Design Area of NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti and by Ruedi & Vera Baur and Susanna Cerri, Civic-City.
Lazy Dog Press is an independent publisher born in Milan in 2012. The name comes from the famous pangram: «The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog», a complete sentence that contains the entire alphabet. The catalog is dedicated to visual culture, with text in calligraphy, illustration, photography, architecture, typography, and design, in addition to essays on the same topics. The books are designed and realized with tailor-like attention and careful choice of materials, contents, production, and graphic style. Among the published authors we find names such as Aoi Huber Kono, Beppe Giacobbe, Bob Noorda, Cesare Leonardi, Franca Stagi, Charles H. Traub, Elisa Talentino, Francesco Dondina, Franco Fontana, Franco Matticchio, Guido Scarabottolo, Luca Barcellona, Gus Powell, Gusmano Cesaretti, James Clough, Jost Hochuli, Katsumi Komagata, Lorenzo Mattotti, Olimpia Zagnoli, Pino Tovaglia and Riccardo Olocco.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Monotype’s fonts and technologies are designed to enable creative expression.They have a library of over 150,000 fonts from the world’s most celebrated and gifted type designers and foundries. Their library includes some of the most famous and widely-used fonts, such as the Helvetica®, Univers® and Frutiger® typeface families, as well as new innovative fonts like Posterama and Masqualero. In the hands of designers their typefaces flourish, becoming a vehicle for innovative, ideas, and poetic forms of expression. Monotype will also be hosting conversations as an exhibitor on the value of typography and sharing design giveaways with attendees over the course of the event. Please visit their table for more information.
On Thursday 23rd the exhibitions in Milano Certosa District will be open from 13.30 to 18.00
Aiap BIG Community 2024 is an event promoted by AIAP, open to graphic designers and member designers, whose aim is to identify and give visibility to a selection of the most relevant visual communication projects, and to increase the sense of community (collective growth, exchange, reflection, study, experimentation, innovation) of communication design. It is also the mise en scène of the communication object: the selected designers, and possibly their clients, will be invited to present their work in rotation in 10 minutes each, in front of a continuously moving audience. A moment of encounter that highlights contents and motivations, often revealing a hidden world: the backstage of the final result, made up of ferments and impulses, of dialogue with the client, of intuitions and unexpected evolutions.
Miscela is the AWDA lounge in the Certosa Design District where you can freely participate in short meetings with activists, feminists, designers and planners to talk together and exchange ideas in an informal and stimulating atmosphere.
Just as a blend of fine coffees creates an intense and multifaceted aroma, our Miscela meetings will mix experiences and points of view on issues of our time.
The official sponsor of Miscela is MOAK, BIG's partner and renowned Italian coffee producer, which will provide AWDA with the opportunity to offer a moment of pause and recharge by tasting a premium coffee during the chats.
Follow the daily programme on AWDA social media, join the Miscela and we'll buy you a coffee!
The daily meetings will start at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Neologia - presentation of the winning projects Presentation of the winning projects of the Neologia exhibition.
Food Book / Drawing without recipes, reproducing the experience
The talk aims to connect the designers' work with a chef's work, focusing on general food culture using words such as ingredients/raw materials, preparation/planning, service, economy…
Library Music: a journey into dark and unknown music
"Library Music" refers to all the albums specially created for TV and the radio to synchronize and comment on documentaries, advertising, and other programs. Library Music includes all kinds of genres, from jazz to the most extreme funk, often composed by high-scale musicians under pseudonyms, an ideal terrain for unleashing the most incredible and free experimentations. Since they were not on the market, the original vinyl records from the 1970s and 1980s are now rare objects valued by collectors, reprinted and listened to by new generations. Luca Barcellona and Andrea Fabrizii, fond connoisseurs of the genre, take us to the discovery of the beautiful world of library music, which is also the main topic of the exhibition dedicated to the album covers. They will disclose the secrets and backstage of this hidden and fascinating world, following a DJ set of the best recordings from their collections. An unmissable event!
Barnbrook's lecture will span more than 35 years of his work, with a particular focus on his collaborations with David Bowie for album covers such as The Next Day and Blackstar. He will also explore the question of whether designers can influence societal change through their work, highlighting his contributions to the Anti-advertising collective Adbusters. Additionally, he will delve into his early forays into digital type design, discussing his creation of the typeface "Mason," which was released by Emigre and became one of the most widely used fonts of its time. Curated by the Communication and Graphic Design Area of NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.
The talk will be in English.
Dj Set by Luca Barcellona and Andrea Fabrizii following the talk Library Music: a journey into dark and unknown music.
Ben Ditto eludes the usual categories that define visual design professionals. At the same time he could own them all, —creative director, designer, stylist, artist, illustrator, publisher, documentary maker — yet it makes no sense to assign any of these labels to him. He is an experimenter, visionary, eclectic, an agent-provocateur. Looking at his work in the lineage of English designers fails to capture the context and complexity his work. More than Alan Fletcher or Peter Saville, we should think of Genesis P. Orridge or Frank Zappa. At this special appearance in Milan, he’ll discuss what he does, how he does it and perhaps reveal some mysteries about why he does it.
An example of circular economy and creativity: from a major exhibition at the Palazzo Reale an alliance between a company, a designer, eight artists and the Healthy Seas foundation.
With Maria Giovanna Sandrini (Aquafil) e Samara Croci (Healthy Seas).
Type is saying things to us all the time. This talk with Sina Otto from Monotype is an opportunity to gain a global view of trends in type and design. What is type saying to us in 2024? This year’s Type Trends report by Monotype is a celebratory look at the universality of type – a collection of groundbreaking designs that reflects our changing world. Sina Otto presents projects featured in the Type Trends report from agencies, designers, and foundries spanning the globe.
The talk will be in English.
Fragile Signals
One of the main reasons for the lack of accessibility in the current directional signage systems is the use of a mainstream model based on average users, the lack of communication in the design of public spaces and “non-places”. Starting from the cultural genesis of social exclusion practices, this talk addresses the need to change the standard for designing inclusive directional signage/wayfinding systems. Curated by the Communication and Graphic Design Area of NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.
Unrealised projects. The unfinished world of Graphic Design
The relationship between designer, project and client. An opportunity to reflect on the inevitable discrepancies between concept and realisation, and the need to recognise and deal with disappointment as an integral part of the design process.
Alive and political - words of data visualization
The talk describes the design process and the reasons behind data visualization projects with different scopes and features. It focuses on the visual languages used to shape information and stories, considering how visual words used in data visualization can be alive and, in some cases, political.
Presentation of the book "Incontri" by Armando Milani for Lazy Dog Press.
The biography of Armando Milani, the world-famous designer, is outlined through anecdotes and images of a hundred fortuitous and unexpected yet wanted and desired encounters that most influenced his work and inspired his creative choices. On the side of each encounter’s story, we find a picture or an artwork related to the character that is in perfect harmony with the expressive style of Milani: to communicate an immediate message, enchanting the eye to reach the heart. Vico Magistretti’s clothespin, Jack Nicholson’s cherries, Paul McCartney’s Happy New Year on the beach, Pelè’s goals, Muhammad Ali’s handshake, Alberto Sordi’s markets, Umberto Eco’s drunken sailors. Milani dancing with Mariangela Melato, and his wife waltzing with Saul Steinberg.
There emerges a mosaic scattered with stories that allow us to reach the deep end of Armando Milani’s biography and his message to us, identified by the founding features of his expressive research: at the base of these encounters, one can find ethics, friendship, the desire and necessity to communicate. It is one of the reasons why his graphic sign is so special. It reaches the essence of things, becoming everlasting and timeless.
Hotpot is a project by Parco Gallery: a bi-monthly publication on graphic design research, theory and history. Every two months, a new article by international personalities from the world of design is shared via newsletter and then made available online for free. The first two contributors are Davide Fornari, who explores the link between the Swiss and Italian graphic design traditions, and Vera Sacchetti, whose reflections focus on the role of women in design throughout history.
Fontstand, in collaboration with BIG, brings an extension of its International Typography Conference series to Milan.
Five speakers from renowned Italian type foundries and members of Fontstand will share the stage for this three-hour program of talks on type and typography. Hosted by Silvana Amato, President of AGI Italia, the conference will feature presentations by Beatrice D'Agostino, Matteo Bologna (muccaTypo), Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini (Zetafonts), Andrea Amato (CAST), and Giulio Galli (CAST), with a short introduction by Fontstand partner Andrej Krátky.
Readability doesn’t exist
Designing fonts means making communication tools available to designers. It also means building signs intended for reading. But do type designers’ choices influence reading? Can we really design something that ensures optimal readability and, at the same time, is a communicative form? From readability studies to the typographic tradition, a path that leaves endless possibilities open to designers.
Unconventional typography, a teaching method
Typefaces are defined by variables that in their infinite combination give shape to ever-changing letters and shapes. What happens when an unconventional parameter comes into play? Unconventional typography can become a teaching method for designers approaching the world of type design for the first time.
Branding a food hall with 14 food venues, 400+ products, and a Market and Grocery by using just one font and not making it boring. A single font can have incredible brand-building potential, especially when pushed to its limit. There’s no more perfect example of this than within the Tin Building, Michelin-award-winning chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new marketplace at the former site of NYC’s historic Fulton Fish Market, featuring 14 food venues with restaurants and two grocery stores and locally sourced meats, cheeses, seafood, and grocery items. The varied branding and designs deceptively feature one font throughout the sprawling facility, representing a wide range of voices, cultures, tones, and uses – exemplifying how each font has limitless applications that can help create entire worlds. Hosted by Mucca’s founder Matteo Bologna, this talk will focus on the creation of Tin Building’s No Exit Octagonal (a custom typeface inspired by past Fulton Fish Market vendors) and its broad and varied use across the brand and sub-brands (from signage to digital to packaging and more), showing the power and flexibility of building a brand on a foundation of a single typeface.
Letters for the Future
In his talk Zetafonts’ creative director Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini will lead the
audience on a typographic journey, searching for personal passions and obsessions that can give the visual designer's work deep meaning.
Anything to declare, then, about AI and typography without sensationalism?
The talk is a report on what is going on in a research lab in Hasselt (Belgium) concerning Generative AI and fonts. How the parties involved communicate: type designers, data scientists, AI specialists and theorists;
the explored technologies, the projects for future developments, and the thoughts about this phenomenon in general. And, in particular, the viewpoint of a type designer who tends to loathe sensationalism.
The twentieth-century concept of Good Design—in all its different articulations—well-resolved functionality, clean elegance, simplicity, affordability was a step forward in the design of a better world, but it was still focused on individual humans, and unengaged with the consideration of equity and sustainability that we now consider imperative. Design for the Common Good is an altogether different dimension of theory and practice, as we will explore together.
The event is by reservation only.
