TDM5: Grafica Italiana

It was time someone took a good look at Italian graphic design: more than a thousand works are on display at the Triennale, presenting an incisive vision of the discipline's first 100 years.

The new TDM5: Grafica italiana [Italian graphic design] in Milan's Triennale Design Museum is an exhibition that people are describing as risky but necessary. It was time someone took a good look at Italian graphic design. No exhaustive history of it has ever been written and, to date, it has certainly been more appreciated and recognised abroad than at home — nemo propheta in patria, indeed.

Confirming its mission as a museum that constantly renews its scientific content and the subjects addressed, the Silvana Annicchiarico-spearheaded Triennale has responded to the challenge, abandoning the world of objects and venturing into the harsher one of visual communication by dedicating the 5th edition of its Triennale di Milano (TDM) exhibition to the — all too often neglected — visible and invisible discipline that portrays, narrates and reveals our world.

The Triennale presents an incisive vision, which is no easy task given this art's multiple facets in its recent history — it suffices only to think of the work produced in the second half of the 20th century by masters (less acknowledged than Gio Ponti and Vico Magistretti) such as Michele Provinciali, Massimo Vignelli, Pino Tovaglia, Bob Noorda, Albe Steiner and Franco Sassi who portrayed and "dressed" not only design products, brand identities, magazines and books, making icons out of them, but also applied graphic art as an educational tool for children and developed it for infrastructural information such as the signage for the metro and airports — sometimes a more immediate and global form of communication than an alphabet. Graphic design is not a style, but a tool that interprets and expresses real life, with a popularising vocation that has social, political and economic implications.

<em>TDM5: Grafica italiana</em>, fifth edition of the <em>Triennale Design Museum</em> exhibition at Milan's Triennale, installation view — *TDM5: Grafica italiana*, fifth edition of the *Triennale Design Museum* exhibition at Milan's Triennale, installation view

Erroneously considered "a 2nd-class discipline" because subject to another's success, graphic design pervades our everyday lives more than we realise — although some do notice —, from the newspaper we buy in the morning to our cinema and train tickets. Certain critics may argue that printed matter will have totally disappeared by 2043, but graphic design has managed to evolve and transform itself in the digital age, becoming a core feature of the web. Visual impact will always make a difference: the ENI six-legged dog is instantly recognisable and draws us straight into its world; no one thinks of Lagostina cookware without also imagining Osvaldo Cavandoli's Linea; and the Antonetto digestive, more familiar perhaps to our grandparents, could not exist without the smiling, stylised man who, in a play of black and white, holds his stomach as if to say "take it to improve your digestion and get your smile back," although nothing is actually written. A whole host of information can be packed into a carefully devised visual design that sums up a universe without the need for a pay-off in words. Good graphic designers develop keys to the world they are describing. Whatever the object being communicated, it must always be accompanied by the communication components that best convey it.

More than a thousand works have been displayed in Via Alemagna by three exceptional curators — Giorgio Camuffo, Mario Piazza and Carlo Vinti — who have developed their own visions of the Grafica Italiana project to offer visitors a lively and all-encompassing vision of the history of these flat — if only in form — 2D artefacts. The exhibition has nine sections and the material is displayed on open cubes, with no protective glass, prompting the desire to reach out and touch or leaf through the illustrated books and magazines — Tropico del Cancro, Permanent Food and even the outstanding cover of a 1954 Linea Grafica — the leaflets, in-house publications, bottle labels, and packaging. "It is really hard to exhibit graphic design because it is totally intangible. We live with it every day and when it came to reviewing and putting together the first 100 years of Italian graphic design we had to cope with its huge complexity. A designer might produce a chair every year but a graphic designer produces "a chair" every three days. Graphic design has a specific role to play, that of conveying knowledge and giving messages visual form", says Mario Piazza.

We wanted to narrate a piece of the history of Italian production; graphic designers have been at its centre, being active players and an integral part of the history of Italian design, helping to build Italy's economy and society

Carlo Vinti, the historian of the curatorial team, says: "We wanted to narrate a piece of the history of Italian production; graphic designers have been at its centre, being active players and an integral part of the history of Italian design, helping to build Italy's economy and society." Giorgio Camuffo adds, "The time really had come to focus on this discipline and I am happy that the Triennale believed in this project. Graphic design is not a servant of [industrial] design, as the stereotype would have us believe, but a driver at the heart of cultural processes."

The catalogue was entrusted to a group of graphic designers who had to bring together a larger world of graphic designers. Left Loft accepted the challenge along with its gutsy publisher, Corraini, for which graphic design has always been a pet focus and consuming passion.

The exhibition design for these both transient and eternal 2D works is by the eclectic Fabio Novembre who, on this occasion, abandoned his usual use of black to ride on a surge of colour. For the press conference, the designer even wore a vibrantly multicoloured Truffaldino-like suit. Seeking to bring earth and sky together, Novembre devised a large rainbow for the Triennale, which he extended out along the sides of the De Lucchi bridge to the Museum, a multicoloured welcome just over the exhibition's threshold. At the exhibition's press conference, Novembre drew on the words of Truffaldino in Servant of Two Masters, taking of the audience while reciting the end of Goldoni's play in Venetian dialect. Bravo!