Luca Lattuga (1982) is a graphic designer, passionate typographer and self-described character hunter. After studying in Bologna and various training experiences in the Emilian capital, in 2012 he founded with Veronica Bassini, Massimo Pastore and Roberto Malpensa the Anonima Impressori studio – very well known in the Italian typographic environment – which deals with project and movable type printing. He loves wooden typefaces, but he also dedicates himself to lead typefaces, a passion that has led him to collect over the years an infinity of movable typefaces, vintage documentation and even machinery and original furniture, from disused typographies and dismantling workshops. The results of this research, after long and accurate recovery, restoration and cataloguing operations, constitute the content of the volume Italian Modernist Alphabets, his first work as an author.
MODERNIST ALPHABETS
24.10
Talk with Carlo Vinti, Luca Lattuga14:30
ADI Design Museum
What does it mean today to deal with the ancient craft of movable type printing?
The first obstacle is to build a laboratory. Unless we are children of art, recovering tools, materials and characters related to a technique that has almost disappeared requires skills that go far beyond the graphic arts: becoming designers, typographers, compositors, researchers, merchants of discarded materials, movers and, sometimes, even mechanics.
In fifteen years of research and adventures, chasing materials from old printers on sale in every corner of Italy, I have built an important archive. The extraordinary variety of alphabets found — many of them without name, author or documentation — has opened a question: how much do we really know about the Italian typographic culture of the twentieth century?
Italian Modernist Alphabets, a research project dedicated to the production of movable type between the 1930s and 1940s, is my answer to an intuition born from my field investigation. A research to reconstruct the historical, aesthetic and manufacturing context, registering the production of original Italian alphabets, relating it to the international scene and, at the same time, deepening its territorial specificities.
What emerges is a much more complex, rich and varied heritage than hitherto known.
MODERNIST ALPHABETS
24.10
Talk with Carlo Vinti, Luca Lattuga14:30
ADI Design Museum
What does it mean today to deal with the ancient craft of movable type printing?
The first obstacle is to build a laboratory. Unless we are children of art, recovering tools, materials and characters related to a technique that has almost disappeared requires skills that go far beyond the graphic arts: becoming designers, typographers, compositors, researchers, merchants of discarded materials, movers and, sometimes, even mechanics.
In fifteen years of research and adventures, chasing materials from old printers on sale in every corner of Italy, I have built an important archive. The extraordinary variety of alphabets found — many of them without name, author or documentation — has opened a question: how much do we really know about the Italian typographic culture of the twentieth century?
Italian Modernist Alphabets, a research project dedicated to the production of movable type between the 1930s and 1940s, is my answer to an intuition born from my field investigation. A research to reconstruct the historical, aesthetic and manufacturing context, registering the production of original Italian alphabets, relating it to the international scene and, at the same time, deepening its territorial specificities.
What emerges is a much more complex, rich and varied heritage than hitherto known.
