In the months prior to the workshop and exhibition, Balland and Istituto Svizzero's Valentina Sansone visited the printing workshops of Angelo Colombo, Giorgio Lucini, Felice and Gianni Nava and Massimo and Michele Pizzi. A series of ideas born out of these visits and conversations formed the basis for a workshop with a group of young graphic artists and journalists from schools in Milan, transforming the Istituto Svizzero's premises into an ad hoc printing workshop and seeking to rediscover old printing techniques inside the city's context — from Lucio Passerini to the Officina Nove Punti.
The Museo della Stampa e Stampa d'Arte in Lodi provided wood and lead types and a 19th-century Stanhope printing press, along with a proof press. Ludovic Balland and Berlin-based graphic designer Emmanuel Crivelli asked for the participants' reactions to a number of comments drawn from the conversation with Massimo and Michele Pizzi, heirs of renowned old printing works in the Milan area.
Throughout December 2012, the posters were put up in different parts of Milan, from the Colonne di San Lorenzo to the suburbs, such as in via Corelli. Pasted over existing posters, they stood out for their different colour, format and manufacture. White and smaller than the norm, the quality of their inks betrayed a craft production against a backdrop of industrial prints — drops in the ocean. An operation that would have otherwise been ephemeral and cryptic was recorded by photographer Salvatore Gozzo, who captured the posters along with their surroundings, urban landmarks, views and details. The posters were then brought into the exhibition space, displayed in triptychs of photographs from Gozzo's reportage, following a curatorial decision to exhibit the posters in their rightful setting, on the city's walls.
Pasted over existing posters, these stood out for their different colour, format and manufacture
Printed Talks in the City follows, Types We Can Make — an event that showed new typefaces produced by designers that gravitate around ECAL — and anticipates a third event which will conclude the Letters on Sale cycle in 2013, and will focus on the connections between graphic design and new media.
Letters on Sale: Printed Talks in the City
Istituto Svizzero di Roma
Via Vecchio Politecnico 3, Milan
