Exhibitions

The “I coralli” series by Einaudi has always had an important role among the realities of the Italian publishing field. Initially curated by Cesare Pavese, it has been a springboard for debuting authors like Italo Calvino and a showcase to introduce great writers, such as Hemingway, Joyce or Quenau, to the Italian audience,
With 312 publications, the series has graphically changed many times. The first version’s cover, used for just one year, was designed to hold a reproduction of artists’ artworks such as Guttuso, Cassinari and Morlotti’s. The second version’s cover, that lasted until 1950, was made of colored cardboard showing a detail from Picasso, Matisse and many others’ masterpieces. The third version’s layout, used until 1961, was quite similar to the previous one but with a ivory background. In the forth version the binding technique changes: the book has a coral red canvas cover protected by an illustrated dust cover.

The poster evolution in the age of Instagram

Graphic design is a discipline in constant development: supports and medias change everyday; messages and purposes are always changing, the experimentation constantly moves towards the supports that are available at the moment, both technological and expressive.
Baugasm, Vasjen Katro’s project, is the perfect example of this ever-changing world: Katro designs and posts on Instagram a poster every day, for over two years.
Some years ago those posters would have been just some ideas on papers, now they can be seen from thousands of people everyday.
His posters range from showing everyday events to pure experimentation, expanding the limits of visual communication itself. The format of the “everyday poster” soon became a trend replicated by hundreds of designers, and now it is the manifesto of graphic experimentation and visual communication in the age of social networks.

ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne presents “ECAL Graphic Design”, an exhibition of projects created by Bachelor Graphic Design and Master Type Design students. A book published by JRP|Ringier accompanies this event.
The Swiss university ECAL has long been recognized as a world reference in terms of, amongst others, graphic design. Be it in designing books, catalogues, magazines or posters, typography or digital projects, ECAL students are able to embrace all fields of this discipline and to masterfully perform a wide variety of assignments. This success is largely based on a policy of workshops allowing them to learn from the best international graphic designers directly on the school premises.
“ECAL Graphic Design” largely retraces projects conducted in the Bachelor Graphic Design and Master Type Design programs over the past five years in the framework of these visits.
Edited by the Gavillet & Cie studio and published by JRP|Ringier, the book revolves around a succession of tracking shots in which projects are not organized in categories but by color. The exhibition design orchestrated by Adrien Rovero is based on the same concept, allowing a total flexibility of the exhibition.

ISIA Urbino is a graphic design and visual communication school with a strong identity, based on the format of the workshop, on the bond with territorial identity and living issues and on the politic aspect of the project.
The works displayed show a glimpse into the didactic activity of the school, with a focus on the second level degree course in Communication and Editorial Design. Without using up the extent of the teaching, this exhibition highlights some key features: 1) didactic as research and experimentation; 2) the attention on the process, allowing to explore new project functions; 3) the cross-disciplinary approach based on specific skills.
Collezione 200, an exhibition-path that, starting from the study of the local history and from an inquiry on the present, faces themes such as local identity and small-town life.
Comunicazionepuntodoc, the new magazine of the Communication Course of Rome’s La Sapienza University, exploring collective design in order to create a coherent iconographic system.
Attivazione di una lettura nello spazio, a contextualized interpretation of a paper by Giancarlo De Carlo on William Morris, published in 1947.

The choices of Albe and Lica Steiner in the graphic design communication for civil commitment

This exhibition is about a selection of social communication posters, designed by Albe and Lica Steiner, starting from the reproductions of what Albe defined as “his first poster”, drawn when he was just 11 years old. When he discovered that his uncle Giacomo Matteotti got murdered, he instantly drawn Mussolini’s “Big face” with the quote “abbasso mussolini il gran capo degli assassini” (“down Mussolini, boss of the murders”) written under the face. The exhibition ends with the posters designed by Lica after Albe’s death, their main focus was the woman condition as a measure of courtesy of a society. The attention of the posters is also about international political events, civil rights, the Resistence’s memory, many topics that are common to cultural exhibitions. The visual of each poster takes form from the emergency to communicate important messages about important topics.

The New Yorker's influence around the world

Since its very first and iconic cover issued in 1925, The New Yorker gradually became an international benchmark for the illustration world. Through almost a century, a simple illustrated cover evolved into a structure of stories of the city as seen by the eyes of the Flâneur, that gentleman who wanders curiously along the streets, passionately looking at the life and the landscape around him. Out of Town aims to tell the international impact that The New Yorker covers have on the illustration world through several tribute projects that want to pay hommage to their own cities: so the life of Paris, Tokyo and Montréal is described through the eyes and the pencil of 120 illustrators coming from all over the world. Concurrently, The Not Yorker project explores behind the scenes of this institution, displaying some of the beautiful rejected submissions that, in the past, didn’t make it to the cover of the famous magazine. Out of Town gathers all these tributes, celebrating their message, their style and their poetics.

Illustration is fashion

Nurant Ilustration Mag presents 12x12, a meeting dedicated to discovering, in 12 steps, the evolution of fashion and society from the early 1900s until this day tomorrow, through the eyes of 4 illustrators for each decade.
Fragments becoming a collective exhibition, a visual timeline made of 48 illustrators and 96 works. A rich project, definitely.
12x12 is born in 2017, when Sonia Mion and Nicola Iannibello (Nurant / VZNstudio) open a series of exhibitions at Milano Fashion Library. Each month for a year, 12x12 explores over a century of fashion, one decade after the other, starting from 1900 and reaching 2020.
This is not the first time Nurant deals with fashion: in 2015 they dedicated a whole issue of the magazine to it.
Back then it was about “fashion soup”: an actual soup on the “out of fashion” world.
But the past reappears, so here is the need for coming back at an obsession we considered exorcised.

This project is an attempt, an inventory of the new up-and-coming medium, the moving poster.
The collection shows the wide range of possibilities as well as the limitations of digital posters, trying to answer questions like: what are the techniques and methods of narration? Where does the poster end and where does a film begin?
It ultimately leads us to the question of what a poster actually is and how this medium will continue to develop in the future.

A series of 152 animated vintage book graphics

Book cover art is typically considered to be a static medium, but when I discovered a series of vintage book covers from the past, I immediately wondered: how would these graphics look like when set in motion?
The aesthetic of many of them, with their minimalist, geometric shapes and alluring colour schemes, the often mesmerizing patterns and hypnotizing layouts – all these elements, when brought to life, add a new dynamic way of looking at these vintage graphics.
Being a motion graphics designer with a background in graphic design, this was definitely a rather straightforward idea. Starting in 2015 this is an on-going project, whenever there was and is spare time (next to my commercial work), I continue searching for covers and transferring them into moving pieces.

On its 8th edition this year, the contest Pazzi per il Fumetto proposes an educational approach to the difficult issue of mental and physical illnesses. This is made possible thanks to the medium of the comic that speaks to people of all ages and that, in the last years, is recognised as a medium by which you can talk about everything.
Those responsible for Villa Iris II, the creators of the project, wanted to involve the Turin headquarter of Scuola Internazionale di Comics that was enthusiast to oversee the contest.
Four pages are designed to talk about mental and physical illnesses. Ten winners are published and awarded and one of the stories, chosen by Villa Iris II patients, receive an honorable mention. The publication, distributed free of charge, carries really important and crucial messages.

Riccardo Guasco and the art of illustrating the bicycle

Veni, vidi, Bici! is an exhibition that tells my relation with the bicycle, gathering almost seven years of posters and illustrations based on the theme of the 2-wheeler. I approached the old-time cycling thanks to the scenery of a theatre, bringing to the stage the main players of classic cycling, Girardengo, Bottecchia, Malabrocca. In this way I’ve come to know the early cycling that brought me from the first portraits of Coppi to the posters for the Dolomiti Marathon. I’ve always tried to reach the core of the bike universe, portraying the men, the dust, the fatigue of a sport that is increasingly looking like a metaphor of life. I like the bicycle when it is brought to life by the man, for the mechanical perfection they mutually acquire, both gaining energy and dynamism. This is what I try to represent when I draw, hoping that it could emerge looking at all these works: a great dynamic energy made of lines, colors, passion and speed.

Italian creatives on the wall

PPPattern is the new digital store dedicated to the fantastic world of patterns, thanks to the collaboration with italian creatives that come from the most different areas of visual communication: illustrators, graphic designers, digital artists, infographic designers, art directors, designers and urban artists.

PPPattern choose Torino Graphic Days as the stepping stone for launching the activity with a special installation, that explicits the patchwork concept.
PPPattern will cover some walls from Toolbox Coworking, showing how it’s easy to redesign internal ambients with just few essential strokes even mixing different patterns.
PPPattern is an italian company. Patterns and products are exclusively produced.

CCCreativi/ CCCrew:
Paola Arena, Adriano Attus, Alkanoids, Dom Barra/Altered Data, Sylvie Bello, Roberto Hikimi Blefari,
Michela Buttignol, Lucia Calfapietra, Elisa Caroli, Antonio Colomboni, Giulia Conoscenti, Oscar Odd Diodoro,
Chiara Fedele, GUE, Il Pistrice, Greg Jager, Livia Massaccesi, Patrizia Mastrapasqua, Lucamaleonte,
MOTOREFISICO, Giulia Nava, Rita Petruccioli, Francesca Pignataro, Massimo Polvara, Gianni Puri,
Jacopo Rosati, Resli Tale, Davide Bart Salvemini, Elisa Seitzinger, Gianfranco Setzu, Studio Mistaker + Masi,
Morena Tamborrino, Paola Tassetti, The 6th, Undesign, Valerio Veneruso, VZN Studio,
Giulio Vesprini, Silvia Virgillo, Giulia Zoavo.

Pandemonio is a Print Club Torino project that involves lots of graphic design agency from Turin, the aim is to create a fertile scene, where people can share ideas and open new paths. The theme of the project is: New Worlds, clearly intended in its broad sense, without any interpretation being excluded.
Each team declined the topic through their style and method with the help from the Print Club Torino tutors, without any graphic limitation, in order to design a small booklet, using the techniques that are available in the lab.
Each agency was associated with a student from the Design and Communication universities from Turin, Polytechnic school of Turin, Fine Arts Academy, IED - European Institute of Design, IAAD - Applied Arts and Design Institute; in order to facilitate a collaboration between agencies and school institutions.

What if, instead of an illustrator travelling with his carnet de voyage, it was the carnet itself travelling from one city to the other, from an illustrator to the next one, how many things would it have to tell? Starting from this question in july 2015, in Turin it begun the long trip of the #carnetitinerante around Italy. It’s a travel booklet, a simple and clean object that morphs gradually: each page brings to unexplored and unknown places with unexpected paths.
Pages fill with different images, different strokes, each one has his own load of personal and abstract thoughts. It’s a physical, metaforical and coral trip of more than 40 “wandering pencils”: a precious group of suggestions, emotional illustrations and original ideas. Its stops are the different desks of the illustrators that opened its doors in different cities, filling it with colors, inks and pencils, invites and cyclings: each page has his own history and personalty. An artistic research about the topic of travelling: this is the idea where the project was born, designed and developed from the association called Circolarte.

Artists (sorted by page order): Mauro Mazzara, Elisa Talentino, Dalia Del Bue, Monica Barengo, Davide Bonazzi, Resli Tale, Francesco Chiacchio, Carolina Grosa, Gabriele Pino, Marco Paschetta, Andrea Musso, Mauro Sacco, Ilaria Falorsi, Laura Pugno, Simona Traina, Gianluca Folì, Elisa Vallarino, Ilaria Urbinati, Tullia Masinari, Paolo D'altan, Marco Somà, Marco Cazzato, Anna Castagnoli, Chiara Fedele, Chiara Morra, Alex Raso, Valentina Biletta, Simone Massoni, Andrea Calisi, Elisabetta Benfatto, Riccardo Guasco, Martina Vanda, Annalisa Bollini, Marina Marcolin, Gianluca Garofalo, Chiara Pasqualotto, Gioia Marchegiani, Vittorio Bustafa, Rossana Bossù, Francesco Poiana, Madeleine Frochaux, Carla Manea
Photos: Ivano Piva

Industrial robotics and human creativity

Steamlab is a space devoted to cross-disciplinary research and advanced learning, where computational design is conceived as a contamination and connection medium, able to bridge creative disciplines [design, arts, architecture], automation [robotics, digital fabrication, computation] and material sciences.
Steamlab is an independent multidisciplinary research laboratory active in the Turin area, while being active member of the international community of researchers, designers and professionals pushing the computational design culture evolution and dissemination.
Steamlab emerges from the renown experience of Co-de-iT - Computational design Italy and from the most recent digifabTURINg initiative, an experimental project addressed to the creative exploration of industrial technologies. Their work is internationally published.

A new Cmyk world

Quadrifluox is a project that explores how fluorescent inks are used for producing typolithographic booklets in four colours.
Inspired by the chromatic palette of contemporary digital graphics, the system develops ultrabright and ipersaturated colours, creating an exceptional chromatic range alternatively to the traditional four colour printing.
The book has been realized with IED Torino. It will be exhibited with the Wood evocative lighting that will turn it into a unique bright object.
The illustrations in the book were created by 27 Italian graphic designers and illustrators.

Geographies of Ecological Surplus explores urbanization as a process of re-organization of world ecological value, through a series of visualizations that build upon a critical instrumentalization of global geospatial datasets. Agglomeration zones, although covering no more than 3% of the earth’s surface, are directly interconnected through their bio-geographical interdependencies with the transformation of the rest of the 70% of the total land surface currently used. This other 70% mostly host landscapes of primary production: agricultural, grazing and forestry zones, sites of resource extraction and waste disposal. This project aims to shed light upon these largely invisible operational landscapes of planetary urbanization, highlighting their critical role in organizing social and ecological. A series of cartographic visualizations offers a macroscopic overview of the operationalization of the planetary terrain through the globalization of primary production, accompanied by two additional series of visualizations focusing on industrialized operations of agriculture and mining across the American continent.

Comparisons and contrasts of a cutting-edge scene

Graphic design transforms ideas into visual projects designed to represent a concept, message or identity. In the last 20 years Warsaw has formed a new generation of designers able to evolve this concept of graphics, reflecting on their role in society. Despite a difficult past of political and social battles has deeply marked it, in fact, Poland has restarted also thanks to young designers, graphic designers and artists lined up on the front lines. These new creatives also fight to bring the name of their country in the world: the carrier of change is visual communication. Posters, fonts, zines, logos and books become the symbol of the battle of a country moving towards the reconstruction of an identity. The exhibition Wars/zawa presents the contrasts and the facets of a city destroyed by wars and rebuilt to go beyond. Warsaw abandons the past and launches itself towards a future increasingly linked to creativity, entering the international scene thanks above all to visual design.

Dunking Answers is the interactive installation born from the collaboration between Print Club Torino and Arduino: a collective demonstration of the potential of physical computing and data visualization — the discipline, or the art, of representing and making numbers, information and data easy to read through graphic expressions. Is it possible to collect the experience of an entire audience and represent it in real time? If you want to discover it, throw the ball and interact with the installation! Once finished your experience you will get your personal poster; This project is possible thanks to the Arduino circuit board that, thanks to a specific algorithm, turn the participants’ physical interactions into distinctive visual elements of a great collective work.

The Push Pin Studio’s Italian Sketches, 1970-1974

Fifty metadesigns in form of illustrations, sketches, drawings from the studio funded by Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins and Edward Sorel founded in New York in 1954 compose the gallery of cardboards, acetates and tracing papers, exhibited for the first time as originals and realized for italian companies between 1970 and ‘74.
Leo Guerra and Massimiliano Padrini made up a unique selection, where the hironical and irreverent spirit of the absolute protagonists of the american graphic design reflects on the research for a logo of a bank of Salento, on the posters for a corset factory of Empoli and in the corporate image for a savings bank in Tuscany.
These project, in most part remained on paper, were transmitted by John Alcorn - during that decade he was an illustrator for the BUR covers - as an “intermediary” between the italian clients and the partners from the old agency. A special focus is made on acetates slides designed for presentations in IT agencies - like Olivetti and IBM Italy - with languages and techniques that anticipated the birth of Powerpoint and Keynote.
The selection is closed with twelve watercolors in pure “Glaser style”, for a calendar that celebrates the icons from the italian reisennance, realized for the C&A retail factory.