Italian Graphic Designer: Massimo Vignelli
With the birth of technology and the start of the digital age, graphic design has been considered a more modern type of design. Like painters and sculptors, graphic designers create artwork that can play a large role in shaping culture and history. However, unlike painters and sculptors, graphic designers are often designing to serve the public in some way. Graphic designers often create advertisements, website designs, company logos, and more to help grow a business, attract consumers, or make the public’s ways of living easier through simplified visuals or maps. There were a few italian graphic designers that had an enormous impact on American design, one was Massimo Vignelli.
Vignelli was one of the first Italian artists to give graphic design a try and he is credited with bringing some of the strongest European influence into American graphic design. Although Vignelli passed in 2014, his work is still shown in the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, and also in museums in Philadelphia, Montreal, Jerusalem, Munich, and Hamburg, Germany, according to the New York Times.
Vignelli had many clients including American Airlines, Ford, IBM, Gillette, and Xerox. He also designed an entire church in Manhattan and created brochures for the National Park Service, shopping bags for Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Barneys, and attempted to design the New York City subway map. Before the term graphic design was largely used, Vignelli considered himself an “information architect” – someone who took the information and translated it into a more easily understandable, visual picture.
Now in today’s age, we know that’s exactly what graphic designers do. Whether you specialize in typography, logo design or website design, your goal as a graphic designer should always be to make the consumer’s lives easier. Vignelli followed this goal. However, not everyone agreed with his approach during 1972 when he attempted to design a NYC subway map.
According to the New York Times, people thought his map of the subway was very confusing and not consistent with the actual geography of the city. People said that the map shrunk the boroughs to geometric shapes that they did not match and that he didn’t acknowledge many streets and parks that were very much there. There was also confusion regarding the colors he chose to represent landmarks and waterways. The New York Times said that beige was used to indicate water rather than blue and gray was used for Central Park rather than green.
These complaints caused Vignelli’s map to be replaced in 1979. However, despite criticism, the map was placed in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection of post-war design.
Vignelli’s impact on American graphic design will always be known and can even be seen in some modern works of art. Without his original subway map, the current one would not have been so widely used and adapted to fit people’s needs. Additionally, people admired his ability to continue refining his work for people to know and love.
The iconic designer spoke for the people with his creations and is still looked up to, to this day.
Works Cited:
Martin, Douglas. “Massimo Vignelli, 83, Dies; Visionary Designer Untangled the Subway (Published 2014).” The New York Times, 27 May 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/business/massimo-vignelli-a-modernist-graphic-designer-dies-at-83.html. Accessed 19 February 2024.
Vignelli, Massimo. “Massimo Vignelli.” Design Is History, http://www.designishistory.com/1960/massimo-vignelli/. Accessed 19 February 2024.
Vignelli, Massimo. “Massimo Vignelli.” Design Is History, http://www.designishistory.com/1960/massimo-vignelli/. Accessed 19 February 2024.